My Life in Kuala Lumpur

Taking the Long Way Home

2012-01-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

Despair at 35,000 feet... and this was the good meal!

You know what they say about the best-laid plans. When I was booking the flights for my trip back to Colorado, I tried to plan everything out properly. I had the flight from Asia to L.A. handled, I just needed to book a flight to get me to Denver from there. Since virtually every airline in America now charges for checked bags, I chose the one airline remaining that lets you check two bags free, Southwest Airlines, thinking this would save me about $100-120. (The other airlines charge $25 for the first bag and $25-35 for the second — each way.) But for whatever reason, Southwest's final flight of the day from LAX to Denver was at 6:20 p.m., and my flight from Asia didn't land until 6:00 p.m., an impossible connection to make. So I booked the flight to Denver for 6:30 the next morning, thinking I'd either stay in the airport (boo!), visit my uncle out in the desert east of Los Angeles, or stay with a friend of mine from KL, who was possibly going to be in L.A. for business at that time (hey, free hotel room). Well... none of that came to pass, so I booked the hotel room at the Radisson while I was in Guangzhou, and that all seemed to be okay, even though it took a $60 bite out of whatever checked-baggage money I had saved by booking with Southwest. (Other airlines had later flights to Denver.)

Things only went downhill from here...

So my uncle decided to make the two-hour drive to my hotel from his place, just so we could visit for a short while (at 3 a.m., mind you), and then volunteered to take me to the airport. However, the roads are not well-marked from the hotel, and we had to take a detour and track back to get to LAX, costing a few minutes. After I was dropped off at the curbside check-in place, there was a massive crowd of people waiting to check in for Southwest (at 5:30 a.m., no less!), and the line inside was even worse. So I stood in the line outside, wondering if I would make it at all. I did, but only barely, and apparently my bags didn't get checked in time, so they were tagged "LATE" like some absurd scarlet letter to announce to everyone what a crappy layabout of a traveler the owner of these bags is. So I got to Denver unscathed, and went to baggage claim where exactly one of my two checked bags made an appearance. The other had not made the flight with me, so it would be coming in on the next flight, which, fortunately, was only an hour later, so I just waited. So, coupled with the long flight, I had an overnight sojourn in L.A. and a delayed suitcase with a yellow-tag scolding from Southwest Airlines.

This, quite grievously, was but a pale, dim harbinger of the misery to come on the journey back to KL.

I already wrote about being stranded in L.A. for 24 hours, so let me continue on from there. Since the employees at Southwest who were there at the airport specifically told me that Southwest would reimburse me for my hotel expense, I got a room nearby, which I also wrote about. I think I made the best of that whole situation, and the time spent there watching the football game and relaxing before heading back to the airport was really not too bad. Once I got to LAX that evening though, I guess things started to unravel. I checked in and gave China Southern my bags some three hours before my flight left, so no problem there. I made my way through the awful security bottleneck at the International Terminal (a little over an hour) and to the gate. Though the Terminal 1 concourse there is actually pretty decent, the actual gates at LAX's International Terminal are dire. Sterile, bare, never enough seats... a truly woebegone farewell to departing passengers. So there I languished for another two hours, then got on the plane for the 15-hour flight back across the Pacific. The flight was completely full, always a nightmare on such an epic flight.

Now think about this... when was the last
time you saw an ashtray at your seat
on a commercial aircraft?

So as I settled into my seat, I noticed something odd. Look at the picture... just what in the chicken-fried hell is going on here? That is an actual ashtray in the armrest of my seat. An ashtray!! Now, this aircraft was a 777-200ER, an aircraft that wasn't even introduced into service until 1997, long after smoking was banned aboard all aircraft. So I can only assume that, at some point, China Southern cheaply retrofitted the plane with seats from another aircraft from the pre-smoking ban days. Lord. That probably explains the sucky quality of the video screens in the seatbacks (and the very limited content selection), which I couldn't even bother to use. So yeah, even though China Southern is the sixth-largest airline in the world that most of the world's population has still never even heard of, they still have a long way to go.

So after an uneventful 15-hour flight across the Pacific that, mercifully, I largely slept through, we landed in fabulous Guangzhou early in the morning on January 10th. The outside temperature was 48°F, about 9°C, and I'm not even joking here, the temperature inside the airport wasn't much higher. I don't know if the heat was not working or if they just never bothered to install it to begin with, but it was flat-out cold inside the terminal. All the workers were wandering around wearing coats and scarves. I half-expected to see a team of sled dogs being mushed down the concourse. Once again, we had to endure the abject silliness of going through immigration and security, all with the added joy of freezing half to death during the process.

What the hell? It's so bizarre, there's not even an
international symbol for it. (Note that all the other
signs have symbols alongside the text.)

Once I cleared the lone security checkpoint and wondered once again what this sign really meant (it doesn't bode well for anyone that the airport has an entire giant sign directing travelers to a place for those whose flights were cancelled), I went downstairs to the gate for the flight to Kuala Lumpur. Yes... downstairs. Unworthy of even getting a real gate with a jetway, the flight to KL boards Air Asia-style, where you walk outside onto the tarmac and climb up a flight of stairs haphazardly propped up against the aircraft. Worse, we had to get on a bus to be delivered to the plane. As I was standing on the bus with all my carry-on booty, this middle-age Chinese woman got on and stood nearby, clearly seething about something. Moments later, she got off, walked over to the gate agents and just completely went off on them, delivering a blistering verbal beatdown... shouting, pointing, screeching, gesturing wildly, the works. It was quite the meltdown. Alas, it was also a Cantonese meltdown, so I have no idea what she was so agitated about. After she finished scolding the agents, she stalked back on the bus and stood there, silently simmering and glowering for another couple of minutes, then, after apparently deciding that she hadn't castigated them quite enough, got off the bus and went and unloaded yet another salvo on the two hapless gate agents, whose ears hadn't even stopped bleeding from the first tirade. Honestly, I cannot imagine what had her so riled up, but she was definitely not amused about something. I thought about filming the whole scene, but can you imagine the drama if she'd have noticed that? Yikes.

Not sure about the Chinese part, but
the English part is a total lie

So this final flight was aboard an ashtray-free 737-800, and really about the limit of what I like to fly on a narrow-body jet — it was about a 4.5-hour flight down to KL. The flight wasn't entirely full, happily, and the seat next to me was empty, which is always a bonus. That, and the fact that none of the planes crashed, really amounted to about the only good parts of the entire odyssey to get back to KL. The food on the long flight from L.A. was adequate (at best... that's what's in the first picture), but whatever crap they served up on the flight from Guangzhou to KL was just hideous. I couldn't even eat it. It was some vile mockery of a chicken dish, and I don't think it was even fully cooked. Avoiding salmonella is one of my standard goals when I eat, so I didn't even sample this mess. I had a couple of forkfuls of rice, and I think I ate the cold dinner roll, too, but that was all. I was so distraught, I even had a glass of wine, ignoring the fact that it was only something like 8 a.m. The "salad" was a half-dozen rubbishy, ill-ripened cherry tomatoes rolling around unhappily in a little melamine dish, nothing more. The whole thing was so pathetic and appalling, I couldn't even be bothered to extricate my camera and snap a picture. Definitely not a memory I wanted to commit to a photo. I can't believe a poor chicken actually had to give its life for that utter sham of a meal. What a complete dishonor. I mean, it's not like the chicken is a noble bird to begin with, but come on. I can only hope that whatever parts didn't go out in a disgraceful blaze of wretchedness for that dish at least got put to a less-humiliating use. Lord... that may just be the worst airline meal I've ever had placed before me. Anyway... once I arrived at KLIA, I cleared immigration, bought my customary bottle of duty-free booze, resisted the urge to drink it on the spot, and wandered out to the luggage claim carousel, happy and relieved that all the winged travel and gruesome, half-cooked poultry was, at last, safely behind me.

See my suitcase here? Yeah, neither did I.

Needless to say, after my travails in the lamentable Guangzhou airport, walking through KL's gorgeous, modern airport, with its myriad shops, free WiFi, and amenities galore (and an additional few degrees of warmth, courtesy of Mother Nature), felt like a total return to civilization. There's not much that Malaysia gets right when it comes to transportation (of any kind), believe me, but KLIA is just a delight to fly in and out of. So, with my liter of booze in hand, along with my carry-on suitcase, my jacket, my laptop, and a portable charcoal grill I got for Christmas, I got my free trolley and eagerly waited for my luggage to arrive. My big bag, the one that weighed every bit of the allowable 23 kg., arrived first and I heaved it onto the trolley, then waited for the smaller bag to make its triumphant appearance, which would effectively punch my ticket to get out of the airport and start the final two legs of my long trip home (airport to KL Sentral, then Sentral to my condo). I waited a few minutes, saw with increasing despair the "last bag unloaded" notice on the monitor, then watched the carousel grind to a halt. No little blue suitcase in sight. Perfect. Pretty much the expected end to, bar none, the worst trans-Pacific trip I've ever taken. So I went to the lost luggage office and filled out the required paperwork, grateful at least that I wasn't in the same sorry boat as the backpacking Australian girls next to me, whose luggage had also gone missing, but who were only going to be in KL overnight at a yet-to-be-decided hotel before setting off for Bali the next day and staying there at an equally yet-to-be-decided hotel. Wow. So I was given a case number and informed that I would get a call once they tracked down my bag. I trudged dejectedly to the bus corral where I bought a ticket for a ride to KL Sentral precisely two minutes after the bus had departed. Sigh. So I had to wait for the next bus, which really isn't as traumatic as it sounds, but I'm going for the total sympathy vote here. I finally departed for the city and arrived about 50 minutes later, a pretty good travel time. I will say this much... the absence of that final bag, which weighed about 20 kg., made schlepping my considerable amount of luggage around KL Sentral infinitely easier, though still quite troublesome. You'd think a massive transportation hub like Sentral would have scores of luggage carts around, but you would be wrong. There are random ones to be found here and there, but they're extremely few and far between. But, tenacious as ever, I managed, and my friend Ivan drove up about 25 minutes later to fetch me. I walked in my condo's door at 4:45 p.m., a staggering, breathtaking 57 hours after leaving for Denver's airport in a snowstorm.

Later that night, I got a call from China Southern airlines, telling me that my bag hadn't actually been lost, no no no, it had actually been purposefully detained in Guangzhou. They said they suspected a pressurized can was in the bag, so they wanted my permission to open the luggage (nice of them to ask) and remove the offending can. Now, fortunately, I had packed my bags with loads of time to spare back in Denver, and actually made an inventory list of what was in which suitcase. Yeah, I know, I'm insane, but I've only ever done this twice, and both times it's paid off. Once was on my initial flight to KL when I moved here and one of my bags got mauled and eaten by the baggage handling system in Los Angeles. And now this episode. I wonder if it's making the inventory lists that's causing the problem?? Hmmm...

Oh, you evil, wicked shaving gel, causing
all this international drama

Well anyway, I consulted my inventory and determined that it could only be the shaving gel that was in there. Though it seems an odd thing to buy in Denver and bring back all the way to KL, consider that the exact same product costs three times as much here, once you convert the currency. Less than $2 (RM6) a can in Denver, about RM18 here. So I tend to stock up when I go back. So, upon hearing this request to open my extremely stuffed suitcase and rifle through it to find and remove my shaving gel, I reflected on a few things. First, China Southern clearly had no problem with the shaving gel flying from L.A. to Guangzhou, so it was questionable as to why this can suddenly presented a problem on the next flight. Second, there was an identical can of this shaving gel in the suitcase that did get flown from Guangzhou to KL, so clearly they were applying the "no shaving gel" rule pretty arbitrarily and inconsistently. And third, HELLO! It's shaving gel. Millions of people pack cans of shaving cream and gel into their luggage every day! I even checked China Southern's website and it wasn't on their "do not pack" list in any form. So in consideration of all this, I flatly refused their request and told them they'd better get their act together and get that bag to me in a hurry. Bizarrely enough, that's apparently all it took, because it was on an evening flight to KL the following day and delivered to my doorstep at 9:45 p.m., intact and unmolested. So because of all this idiocy, China Southern apparently had to pay Malaysia Airlines to fly my bag to KL, then pay some airport guy to drive it out to my place. I will say this much though: In a similar scenario, there's no way America's odious TSA agents would ever ask a passenger for permission to open a suitcase. They'd open it on a lark, forcibly if necessary, take out whatever they deemed to be the problem item, steal any valuables if it suited their fancy, and leave you a note for your troubles. (They apparently did this to my bag in Denver before flying it to L.A., and though they didn't remove anything, they obviously couldn't be bothered to re-secure my brand-new luggage strap around the suitcase because it was gone when the bag hit the carousel at LAX. Awesome. Thanks guys.)

So now, the only thing left to do is try to get my reimbursement from Southwest. So far, they're refusing, but I'm not backing down since it was totally their fault the flight was delayed (they told me it was a baggage unloading issue that delayed the plane from even reaching Denver on time), totally their fault I missed my flight to Asia, and totally their employees who emphatically assured me I would be reimbursed. I'm rather annoyed by Southwest's unwillingness to own up to this and just pay my hotel bill, but I am almost certainly not going to fly China Southern again if there's any way to avoid it. They're just stupid. Stupid airline and an even stupider airport. *Shakes fist*

To end on a more upbeat note, I'll close out with a few photos from the trip that didn't make the previous entries. See you next time...

Shiloh and me in happier, pre-travel times;
I just need an eye patch and a pirate hat

The City and County building in
downtown Denver... all lit up
for Christmas

Frozen waterfall — Idaho Springs, Colorado
(Can it even be called a waterfall? It's not water and it's not falling. Hmm.)

My dad and mom, hunkered down against the
howling winter winds in the mountains west of Denver

A cold, clear late December day in the Rockies

My crazy bird, Shiloh, helping herself to my coffee

Christmas in Colorado

2012-01-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

At long last, I'm back at my place in Malaysia. The voyage back was easily the worst I've ever endured. Let's recap, shall we? Totally stuffed-full airplanes, flight delays, screaming toddlers, missed connections, the freaking 24-hour delay in Los Angeles (lest we forget), a cancelled flight, bad food, bad turbulence, and to top it all off, lost luggage.

Before I get into all of that, and before I lay down a blistering, excoriating critique of China Southern Airlines (and possibly Southwest Airlines, too) and the woefully inept Guangzhou airport, permit me to write about the actual trip back home, which was really good. I may put the saga of the trip back to KL in its own separate entry.

As I noted in an earlier entry, we got a substantial snowfall just before Christmas, which began the day I arrived in Denver. After that, there was no snow for the rest of my stay, until the day I left. Thought that was pretty interesting, and was really exactly how I'd have scripted it, had anyone asked me. :)

I've gotta dream up a name for these!

For reasons passing understanding, I agreed to prepare and cook Christmas dinner for everyone (ten people), even though I was only arriving in town three days before that. It was a bit of a fiasco trying to get all the ingredients I needed before the stores closed on Christmas Eve, but it ultimately worked out okay. I decided to cook a couple of Beef Wellingtons with spinach and mushroom duxelles (and all the side dishes, as well). I also made a wild mushroom soup with crème fraîche as the starter. That part was good, but the beef didn't cook as quickly as I had hoped, so there was a long delay between the soup course and the entrée course. Whoops. I also prepared hors d'oeuvres, but have no name for this little creation. It's a slice of Genoa salami and a bit of garlic- and herb-seasoned cream cheese in a small puff pastry shell, festooned with a stuffed Manzanilla olive. It's one of my favorites to make, and they just burst with contrasting flavors. Anyway, the dinner was great -- family and friends. We all exchanged gifts and ate and drank and just enjoyed the day. We had the dinner at our friends' house in Colorado Springs, and they routinely get deer wandering around in their yard and we had a trio come right up to the back door as we were getting the dinner ready.

The table is set for Christmas dinner...

"You're not cooking venison, are you?"

Dad and me, freezing at Red Rocks Park

In an even greater source of confusion, my mom took it upon herself to e-mail my father, who lives in Alabama, and invite him out to Colorado while I was in town. Now, they divorced over 35 years ago, and really haven't spent any appreciable time together in at least three decades, and it's been at least that long since the three of us, our little erstwhile family unit, had been under the same roof. So when she dropped this bombshell on me, that my dad would be appearing in Denver the day after Christmas, and staying at her place, no less, I was pretty stunned. However, I knew it would all be just fine and likely pretty enjoyable... and it was. Turned out to be a really fun visit. Here's a pic of him and me at Red Rocks, the park and natural amphitheater just west of Denver. Dad was there visiting for four days and had a great time. I took him to the Coors beer brewery for the free tour, which I hadn't done myself in probably 15 years. They give you three complimentary beers to drink at the end -- a beer tasting, I guess, since you can choose from about 10 different offerings -- and since they're very nearly full-sized beers, we got a tiny bit buzzed, then headed down the street (in downtown Golden, Colorado) to the Capitol Grille and split a wonderful and huge grilled bison burger with some of the best crispy fries I've had in a long time... and had another couple of local beers. Ha ha. It was great.

It wasn't until half the pizza had been devoured that
I realized I hadn't yet snapped a picture of it!

Another high point was going up to the mountains one day. We went to a landmark restaurant in the small town of Idaho Springs called Beau Jo's. This place makes Colorado-style "mountain pies" — big, thick-crust pizzas that people heading to or from the ski slopes of Colorado's mountains have been savoring for many years. We actually got a "prairie pie," which is the semi-thin crust version, and created this culinary marvel from their ridiculously long list of crusts, sauces, cheeses, and toppings. My dad was raving about it, calling it perhaps the best pizza he had ever eaten. It was made with a basil-pesto sauce, a four-cheese blend of mozzarella, provolone, fontina, and feta cheeses, pepperoni, mushrooms, Andouille sausage, and a shower of Greek herbs and seasonings on top. It was absolutely gobsmacking delicious, I kid you not. From Beau Jo's, we proceeded over the always-scenic Highway 103 over Squaw and Juniper Passes. There were ferocious winds howling through the Rocky Mountains that day, easily gusting up to 90 mph (144 km/h), so we saw a lot of what they call "ground blizzards," where the high winds whip up the snow from the ground and can create whiteout conditions, even under a cloudless blue sky. It was a beautiful drive. Cresting the pass at over 11,000 feet (3,300 meters), the views are always breathtaking, and this time was no exception. You can see why people love living in Colorado!

The amazing view from Colo. Highway 103

This is the view of Denver from Red Rocks Park in the
foothills just west of the city

The rest of the trip was pretty standard... relaxing, shopping, eating out (had some outstanding Mexican food, as usual), evenings by the fire, things like that. One of the other nice moments happened around dusk one afternoon (the sun sets very early in December there) when we were up in the foothills in a town called Evergreen. The town has a good-sized lake that, of course, freezes over every winter. A part of the lake is maintained for ice skating, and there were loads of people out skating that day. I snapped a picture that quickly became my favorite of the trip... it's truly a winter wonderland. Boys crossing the bridge over a frozen creek with their hockey gear after a day spent on the ice, the last of the afternoon's warmth and light stealing from the scene, the crowds still ice skating under the darkening sky... it was just magical. A huge part of getting that great shot is simply being in the right place at the right time (and having a camera handy).

Ice skating in Evergreen, Colorado

I took this picture at my mom's place as we were leaving
for the airport... and the snow was falling again

As 2011 gave way to 2012, I still had a week to enjoy being in my home city, and the weather was just fantastic. One fine day — in early January, mind you! — the temperature hit nearly 70°F (21°C). But it didn't last. When I first moved to Colorado back in 1989, I was repeatedly told, "If you don't like the weather here, just wait an hour." Sure enough, the temperature had plummeted to 42°F (5°C) by the next day, and the day after that, my departure day, it was snowing steadily. Such is life in Colorado! Here in KL, no one ever discusses or cares much about the weather, because it's mostly the same day in and day out. You'll hear no forecasts on the radio, see no weather segments on the local news... it's just not something that needs any real consideration here. In Denver, though, the weather is a major factor in people's day-to-day life, and it changes all the time, sometimes crazily and rapidly!

So I'll wrap this up here and write soon about the odyssey of getting back to Malaysia. Never a short journey to begin with, this particular one took a jaw-dropping 57 hours to complete. The harrowing details... coming soon.

Marooned in L.A.

2012-01-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

I admit it. I'm one of those people. I don't want to get to the airport three hours before my flight, just to sit and languish in the airport forever while waiting for the flight to board. I've had my fair share of close calls, but have never missed a flight, and really, have very rarely made any mad dashes through the airport, either.

This is a deliriously happy sight for any traveler!

However, this time was different. With snow falling on the day of my departure and three very heavy suitcases to heave around, I was taking no chances. My mom and I had a great lunch and a pitcher of margaritas at a local Denver Mexican restaurant at around 2 p.m., then headed to the airport very early. I arrived some two and a half hours before my flight, and I am here to tell everyone: If you want to fly out of Denver hassle-free and without a crowd of millions at every security checkpoint, Saturday evenings seem to be the time for that. Look at this total lack of people at security. I breezed through!

Unfortunately, that's pretty much where the good times ended. For some reason, the plane that was to take me to Los Angeles was late in arriving, so there was an announced 20-minute delay in the flight. Since I had a little over a two-hour layover in L.A., this wasn't too troublesome. However, the 20-minute delay swelled into a 75-minute delay, and we took off at 8:12 p.m. instead of the originally scheduled 6:55 p.m. As we made our approach into L.A., our announced arrival time was 9:07 p.m. My China Southern flight was scheduled to depart at 10:30, so I was pretty concerned at this point.

My snow-covered plane that got me to LAX safely,
just not on time

The flight itself was fairly bad, too. The snow in Denver didn't cause any serious problems apart from an extra ten minutes or so of delay as they de-iced the plane's wings. But once we got airborne, nothing really improved. Despite the near-empty terminal, this flight was completely full, and there must have been two dozen small children on the plane. I'm not kidding; there were at least six of them right around me, one of whom threw a full-blown and very loud screaming tantrum as we neared LAX. We also had some really bad turbulence on the descent, too, which is never a good time. Anyway, we landed, taxied to our gate, and I got off as quickly as possible and collected my checked luggage probably around 9:35, loaded up a luggage cart, and bolted out the door for the International Terminal, which is stupendously far from Terminal 1 at LAX. At a leisurely walk, it would easily take 12-15 minutes. I got there in about half that time, and when I got to the China Southern check-in counter, it was nearly closed. Only two staffers were still there, and they were closing out everything and cleaning up. They initially said that it was possible for me to make the flight, but that there was absolutely no way my luggage would go -- and that it would arrive a day later. After explaining my options to me, it was around 9:50, and by that time, there was no way for even me to get through security and to the gate, so I had officially missed my flight thanks to Southwest's delay.

So, on the advice of the China Southern ticket agents, I trudged all the way back to Terminal 1, only to find that the entire Southwest ticketing wing was closed. Nobody was there at all, so I went down to baggage claim and found some of their staff hanging around. They issued a so-called "delay certificate," which supposedly will get me onto the next China Southern flight without being charged, and told me that Southwest would reimburse me for my lodging and food on account of my being stranded for 24 hours in Los Angeles, so I'm saving my receipts and holding out hope that Southwest will be as good about taking care of this issue as they were about paying up for my destroyed suitcase and its contents back in September 2008 when I first moved to Malaysia. Like this time, that flight was also quite late in departing. I'm not sure what it is with Southwest and its flights to L.A., but I've not had any luck at all with them.

Watching the game at the Radisson's restaurant

I got a shuttle bus to the Radisson, staying once again in the same hotel I stayed in almost three weeks ago, except that time intentionally. And that's where I am now. I went down to Subway for lunch, and wow, was it ever nice outside! Can't deny that southern Califoria in January is a great place to be... it was a perfect 67°F (about 19°C) with nice blue skies. So I had my lunch, and the front desk folks let me stay in the room until about 2:30 p.m., and now I'm in the lobby in their casual restaurant, just relaxing, surfing the net, and watching the Broncos-Steelers NFL playoff game on TV, which is a great way to pass the time... much better than being adrift and miserable at the airport, in any case. It's about 4:30 p.m. now, so I have another six hours to go before my flight departs. With any luck, my next entry will be from the cozy confines of my condo in Damansara Perdana.

Oh, as a P.S., I just got an email notifying me that China Southern has cancelled the flight from Guangzhou to KL that I was originally scheduled to be on. At first I thought it meant that they had cancelled my seat since I missed the flight from L.A., but when I read it carefully, it showed that that the entire flight was cancelled. So even if I had somehow managed to make that outbound flight from L.A. last night, I'd still have been stuck, for who knows how long, in Guangzhou's airport of despair... so maybe this was all for the best.

Will I ever get home?? Stay tuned!

P.S. again... BRONCOS WIN IT IN OVERTIME!!!!!

Greetings from America...

2012-01-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

Winter in the Rockies,
black-and-white style

... and happy 2012 to everyone. Apparently, this year marks the end of the world, so let's make sure it's a good one. Ha ha.

So here I am, home for the holidays back in Colorado. Christmas has come and gone, and now, all the New Year's festivities are behind us, too, so I thought I'd write and kind of give an update on the trip so far. I've been here almost two weeks now and have a few more days before leaving the Rocky Mountain state and flying back to Malaysia.

The flight over was pretty uneventful, a marked difference from the dreadful China Southern flight home two Christmases ago. The layover was much shorter, and the airplane was newer. But they still have a ways to go. In 2009, I didn't even get a boarding pass for the second leg of the flight (Guangzhou to L.A.) until I actually arrived in Guangzhou, an issue that caused quite a kerfuffle. This time, I got both of my boarding passes upon check-in at the counter in KL, but once we arrived in China, a mob of transit passengers was still required to stand in a lengthy immigration queue. Apparently, the fine people in Guangzhou still haven't sorted out what "transit" means. At every other airport I've transited through (Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, etc.), all transit passengers just get herded to the transit area. There's no passport inspection, no checking of documents, you're just passing through. So after the lengthy wait to clear immigration (for whatever reason), I proceeded up an escalator to an even slower line... for security screening. Never mind that we had just gotten off an international flight, hundreds of people had to be shoehorned through ONE security gate. Every person was metal-detected, hand-wanded, and their belongings x-rayed. Keep in mind there was only one line for this, and it took forever. Seriously, transiting in Guangzhou still sucks. The only reason I chose China Southern again was just the huge difference in fare price ($1,000 USD vs. about $1,600 and up for every other airline).

So once I finally cleared security, there I was, on that same hellish concourse from two years ago where I languished for 20 hours in total on two epic layovers. I didn't have long to wait this time, but WiFi is still frustratingly absent there. Numerous people were wandering around in a techno-daze with their smartphones and laptops held out plaintively, searching in vain for working WiFi signals. I finally found one at one of the tea/coffee shops, and felt compelled to pay a whopping $6 USD for a cup of admittedly very nice tikuanyin tea just to use their network guilt-free. But by that time, my flight was already about to board, and the tea shop was completely chaotic, so I was very pressed for time. I somehow managed to hurriedly book a room at the Radisson hotel near LAX using my little iPod and a hotel app I had just downloaded. Since I'd be overnighting upon arrival in L.A., booking the hotel gave me a great sense of relief, knowing I wouldn't be adrift in the airport there from 6 p.m. until 6:30 the following morning. So off we flew... and funnily enough, we actually landed in California earlier (by local time) than when we departed!

So I got to L.A. and cleared immigration and customs easily and efficiently. The airport in L.A. still sucks, but they are definitely making strides in improvement, particularly in the international terminal. It's loads better than it was 3-4 years ago, so props to them for that. I still prefer flying into other ports of entry into America, though. I got my luggage and found the free shuttle bus to the Radisson and headed off into the California evening. I was really surprised that I was able to get such a nice hotel right next to LAX for only $58... it was a mobile-only promo on some iPhone app, so I was happy to get that rate. I wouldn't expect to get much more than a budget motel for around $50 in Los Angeles, but this was a solid 3-star-plus hotel. The room was great, the bed was huge and very comfortable, and I got to enjoy a long soak in a hot bath... total bliss after a 13-hour trans-Pacific flight (which itself followed a 4-hour flight and 3-hour layover for a grand total of 20 hours of transit). There was a Subway just nearby, so I walked down in the surprisingly chilly night air (mid-40s -- I didn't know L.A. ever got that cold) and got a footlong Italian sub and took it back to my room and devoured it. So tasty!

This is the morning after the snow
began -- we got a bit more, but this
shows the majority of the snowfall

The next morning, December 22nd, I flew to Denver and within hours of my arrival, snow began falling, continued at a fairly heavy rate throughout the night and until around lunchtime the next day. When it finally stopped, we had around 10" (25 cm), a hefty snowfall for the city in December. With this much snow on the 23rd, a White Christmas was virtually guaranteed! The following day, Christmas Eve, we had a spectacular, cloudless blue Colorado sky, and the fresh blanket of snow really made it easy to get into a holiday mood!

I'll stop here and write more once I get back to Malaysia, along with a lot more pictures, but here are a couple to get you started... the one from my mom's back porch here is interesting because of the expanse of deep snow on the hillside in the background. It doesn't provide much contrast with the snow on the table, but you can sort it all out. It was a nice, deep snowfall, for sure!

To be continued...

Midday on Christmas Eve just near my mother's house...
definitely click on this one to enlarge!

Rendang: A Cook's Journey

2011-11-29T04:12:00.001-07:00

That's not rendang! One of my homemade pizzas:
Slightly charred crust, real pepperoni that's just crisp
around the edges, plenty of cheese... ahhh...

As anyone who knows me can attest, food is one of my great passions. I routinely and regularly make flatbread pizzas here, and have even reverted to making regular pizzas, too (making the dough from scratch, as I always did back in Colorado). I'm planning on getting a baking stone on my trip back home for Christmas so I can really do some proper pizzas in my little countertop oven. In the meantime, though, this is typical of the sort of pizza I usually make. Very rustic. Very tasty.

A good pizza is always going to be a big hit with me, but one of my favorite regional dishes to make and to eat is rendang. I've yet to meet any local here who doesn't respond very favorably to the mere mention of this word. And it's easy to understand why: Not only is this dish usually reserved for holidays and special occasions in many parts of Indonesia and Malaysia, it's a sumptuously flavorful way to prepare meat. In fact, I just learned that in a 2011 poll of 35,000 people by CNN International, rendang was chosen as the number one dish for the "World's 50 Most Delicious Foods" list (click to read the list... it's fascinating)! You can use almost anything for a good rendang... chicken, lamb, beef, duck, even water buffalo. The meat is just the carrier for the flavor that comes from a blend of fresh spices and a rather unique method of preparation.

I've actually made this dish a few times before, but never since moving here, which is odd. Here in KL, you can find hastily prepared rendang scooped alongside a serving of nasi lemak, but no one would pretend that such rendang is really in the same league with one that's been made by a local home cook in a traditional village. To put it mildly, rendang is a labor of love... it's a tiring and time-consuming dish, both to prepare and to actually cook. However, one of my friends recently gave me a nice mortar and pestle, so I figured I should break it in with an auspicious dish, and rendang definitely qualifies.

Starting to pound the spices

The recipe I use is from West Sumatra, Indonesia (where rendang originated among the Minangkabau people), uses beef, and absolutely drips with complex flavors. Pounding out a good spice paste to start with is a key step in the preparation. I use a laundry list of spices and aromatics: whole nutmegs, cloves, ginger, shallots, turmeric, garlic, galangal, candlenuts, red chilies, lemongrass, daun salam (the closest we have in Western cooking is bay leaves), cinnamon sticks, and Kaffir lime leaves. Most of these ingredients are pounded in a mortar until a loose, wet, yellow-orange paste is formed... this is the tiring part. You can use a food processor (and I have before), but I wanted to make this one the traditional way. The aromatics (the last four ingredients) are thrown in whole.

And here it is after a LOT of pounding and mashing

I got lucky... when I was shopping for the ingredients, Australian beef (and just the cut I wanted, no less) was on sale for RM26.90 per kilo. To put that in American perspective, it's about $3.80 per pound. Not really cheap, but good beef never is... and saving RM9.00 per kilo was a great thing.

Not as richly marbled as is ideal for this dish,
but still some pretty nice cuts of Aussie beef

So I cut the beef into large pieces and threw them in the pan with the spice paste, then added two cups of coconut milk and the aromatics and started cooking. You can imagine the intense smell at this point!

Mixing the spice paste in with the beef chunks

Adding the aromatics... lemongrass, cinnamon,
Kaffir lime leaves, and daun salam... Note the
coconut milk in the upper right, waiting to be added

This is after about an hour and 15 minutes of cooking

Then began the waiting. I said rendang was a time-consuming dish, and a lot of that is the cooking process. In Western cooking, we have a two-step process called braising whereby a meat is seared at high temperature, then simmered in a liquid. Rendang is cooked in the opposite way. It's first simmered in a liquid (the coconut milk and spice paste) until all the liquid in the coconut milk reduces and, finally, evaporates completely, at which point the meat is "pan-fried" in the fats rendered from the coconut and the meat itself. You can probably get an idea now of why rendang is so redolent with complex flavors. However, the whole process can take hours. Since I was making a relatively small batch (only about 650g of meat -- a bit less than 1.5 pounds), it only took two hours for the liquid to fully cook off. I made a big batch back in Colorado once for a dinner party for 20-25 people and it took over eight hours to cook!

Garnished with thin-sliced cili merah and
shreds of Kaffir lime leaves

And here's the final product. I had some friends over and served this with mounds of fluffy hot rice that I steamed with coconut milk, lemongrass, a bit of sliced ginger, and a couple of torn Kaffir lime leaves. Outstanding... the rendang came out pretty spicy and delicious, and there was even some left over, which is great. Like plenty of home-cooked dishes, rendang is even better the next day, as the many complex flavors have had time to develop and meld together.

Sorry if this entry made anyone hungry... never a great idea to view my blog on an empty stomach!

Until next time...

Two countries, three destinations, four days!

2011-11-25T22:33:00.001-07:00

In America, with its vast size and impressive system of highways and byways, the road trip is a fixture in our lives. Either taken with the family on vacation or with friends as a rite of passage, most Americans have taken aimless road trips at some point or another.

America's Interstate Highway
System: Road Trip Nirvana

Naturally, it's a lot more expensive nowadays with the price of gas so much higher than it was when I was younger, but a lot of the credit for who I am must be given to road trips I took in my late teens and early twenties. It gave me that sense of adventure and desire to just set out and explore, without a fixed plan or rigid itinerary. After high school, having grown up in Alabama, one of my best friends and I drove up the entire eastern coast of the United States and on into Canada. I saw New York for the first time, ate lobster on a small island off the coast of Connecticut, and crossed into a foreign country for the first time. Back then, passports weren't even required for Americans to go into Canada. It was subsequent road trips that first introduced me to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains, the place I'd come to call home and spend nearly all of my adult life. I've driven on both coasts, in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston... driven to Canada, Mexico, and in a few other foreign countries, too.

So it was with this mindset that I suggested a Malaysian road trip of sorts to my friends. Two of them were participating in the annual Penang Bridge Run, an international marathon that attracts thousands from all over the world to run across the 13.5-km Penang bridge, itself one of the world's longest. There are categories for a full marathon (42 km), a half marathon (21 km), and about a quarter marathon (10 km). My friends were doing the 10-km run, which started at 6 a.m. (The full marathon began at 2 a.m.) They invited me and some others along, so I booked us a two-bedroom suite a couple of months ago -- which even then was hard to come by since the race attracted a record 27,500 runners this year from 67 countries -- and then two of us planned to continue a road trip beyond Penang after our stay there.

Everyone following this so far?

So I proposed that we just head north from Penang, drive into Thailand, go wherever we felt like there, then come back to Malaysia, drive over to Kuala Perlis (at the very northern tip) and take the ferry to Langkawi. No real plans, no hotel reservations beyond Penang, just going where the road took us.

At the Gurney Drive Hawker Center

So on the morning of the 19th, the five of us all met at a nearby McDonald's for breakfast, then set off for Penang afterwards. It's about a three-hour drive, and we had good weather, so it was easy. We arrived at our hotel in Bayan Lepas around midafternoon, got checked in and situated, rested for awhile, then went off in search of dinner. We decided to go to the hawker centers at Gurney Drive, which is in the heart of Georgetown. Even at the best of times, this stretch of roads is jam-packed, so it took us a long while to get there, find parking, and get to the food stalls. Look at the sea of people there! We all wandered off in search of different food. I waited in line for about 15 minutes to get an order of Penang's famous char kuey teow, truly one of my favorite dishes in Malaysia.

Firing up an order of
spicy Char Kuey Teow in the wok

Ivan and Cat at 5 a.m.,
modeling their official racewear

Owing to my awesomely giving nature, I generously agreed to wake up at 5 a.m. to drive Ivan and Cat, the two who were running in the race, to the place they needed to be to start their run. In retrospect, the hotel was actually fairly close to Queensbay Mall, so they could have actually walked (we saw many people doing just that), but really, who wants to walk 2-3 km to the starting point of a 10-km run?? Anyway, here they are with their official race shirts and everything. So we got to Queensbay and there were people everywhere. Now, keep in mind, the runners in the full and half marathons were already all well underway; only the 10-km and "fun run" participants were meeting at this time, and there were still thousands and thousands of them. They've been doing this annually since the bridge opened in 1985, and it's really well-publicized, but still, the nine-hour closure of the bridge causes problems for those unaware of the race. Last year, some 200 people missed flights because of it, quite a few of them international holidaymakers who had no idea the bridge would be closed. Since it's (at the time) the only connection to the mainland apart from painfully slow and infrequent ferries, the closure can be a real headache. They are currently building a second bridge to the island, though... we saw it to the south as we crossed the bridge to Penang. It's scheduled to be completed in September 2013, so in a couple of years, there will be an alternate route for motorists during the race closure.

So Ivan and Cat both finished in the top half (or maybe top third) of their respective categories (10-km men, 10-km women), got their medals, and walked back to the hotel room, where all the rest of us were still very much passed out asleep. They napped for a bit after returning, and after we had all taken our respective showers and gotten packed, we checked out around 1 p.m. and once again, ventured in to Georgetown, and stopped at a seaside restaurant for some lunch. Then some of the group headed back to KL, while some of us went north to Thailand and the beginning of the real road trip.

I had never been further north by car than the Penang Bridge exit on the North-South Highway, so for me, that's where the adventure really kicked in. Everything was fresh and new, although I must admit, the landscape looked the same. Ha ha. So we drove the two hours to the Thai border, coughed up even more money in tolls (the total bill for tolls on this trip was alarming... more on that later), and stopped at the big "Zon" duty-free shop, the same one that's in airports, that lies between the Malaysia and Thai borders. Officially, I think it's still in Malaysia, but it seems to exist in this sort of limbo, where you've sort of left Malaysia, but haven't technically entered Thailand yet. We popped in and I bought a 5-liter box of Australian wine, some Scotch whiskey, and a bottle of creme de cacao liqueur. Oh, and a couple of beers. I don't really drink beer here much (certainly not the local swill), but I do like to use it for cooking -- it's great for making breads and batters, but a single can is so expensive here, I never bother. Duty-free, however, a can of beer only costs about RM2, so I picked up two cans. Ivan headed straight for the chocolate and bought, I think, about a metric ton of it.

Here's the border crossing... luckily not too crowded

After that, we proceeded on to the border, which is best described as a 50/50 blend of chaos and apathy. It was bizarre. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to the process... some people were just waved through, almost no one was stopped nor any car inspected, and yet we still had to do the whole thing twice to get it right. First we had to drive into Thailand and park behind this big building. Now technically at this point, we are fully in Thailand and could have just driven merrily on. There was no one to stop us (except a random monkey sitting there picking through the garbage, no joke). But we took our passports and documents to the walk-through section, took care of that, then went and got in the car to drive on in. However, at this time, there WAS an actual non-simian person there, who said we had to go around the other way. So we backtracked around behind the aforementioned building and drove back through one of the "entry" lanes, where we were directed to park (at the same place we had been before... sigh), and fill out more paperwork to bring the car into Thailand. Because of old tariff regulations that are still on the books, what you actually must do is "temporarily import a vehicle for the purpose of tourism." I had researched this ahead of time, so I knew to have the registration form with me. So the lady printed up the form while eating a piece of cake and dropping crumbs all over the book I had to sign (this was the apathy part of the blend), and once I signed that, agreeing in fact to re-export the car within 30 days or pay a big fine, we drove on into the border town of Dannok, just a couple of dozen kilometers south of Sadao. (As an interesting note, all the dates on the form were in Buddhist calendar form... I think this is year 2554 in the Buddhist era. So I was agreeing to export my car from Thailand before December 21, 2554.)

Streetside in Dannok, Thailand

Now, Dannok itself is not on any map, but it has a bank, a bunch of shops, at least a dozen karaoke clubs (which are apparently just fronts for sex dens judging by the girls hanging around them), and a McDonald's, so it is a legitimate town. And like all border towns, it's a wild and fun place to hang out. We arrived just before sundown, so there was a palpable buzz of activity as everyone was rushing to get their business handled before darkness fell. We drove around, then parked and walked around, just taking it all in. The difference between Malaysia and Thailand is as extreme as the difference between Singapore and Malaysia at the southern border. Just as Singapore is financially leagues ahead of Malaysia, so too is Malaysia ahead of Thailand, and you can tell as you cross the border.

"Excuse me, sir? Sir? I'm gonna have to ask you to
move your elephant."

We hadn't been in Thailand for ten minutes when we saw our first elephant being "parked" in front of the bank, right next to all the motorbikes. I half-expected to see an "Elephant Parking Only" sign there. Awhile later, we had ventured off the main road and, quite by accident, stumbled on this open-air restaurant that was doing brisk business. Their sign proclaimed an all-you-can-eat buffet for a ridiculously cheap 119 Baht. One of the great things about traveling in Thailand is that the Thai Baht usually runs at about 10:1 to the Malaysian Ringgit, so it makes currency conversion very easy. Thus, 119 Baht is RM11.90 (about US$3.75). We had also seen this little food stall selling crabs, and we were really leaning towards having crabs for dinner, but their price was really quite high. Why are crabs always so expensive? They're not rare, they're easy to catch, and even easier to cook. But for some reason, no matter where you go, things like crabs and shrimp cost a bomb. Anyway, for quite a bit less than the cost of one kilo of crabs (four medium-sized ones), we could have two buffets at the other place, so we opted for that and headed back there. In the end, it was a great decision.

Sliced pork belly... otherwise known as BACON!

Steamboats are a popular way to eat here in Malaysia. A pot of simmering broth, usually spicy, is served over a propane-fueled fire at your table, and an assortment of seafood and vegetables are provided for cooking in the soup. This buffet was similar in some ways, but quite different in others. First, the fire wasn't fueled by gas, but rather a big clay kettle of flaming coals, which was delivered to the table and placed in a cut-out in the center. Then, an aluminum shield was placed over the fire. This shield has a raised portion for grilling, and a "moat" around that for the broth, which was delivered in a big kettle, so we could replenish the broth during the course of the meal. A little trolley for drinks and a bucket of ice was delivered and parked next to the table. Then you just help yourself to the buffet line of chilled meats and other goodies -- fish balls, crab sticks, etc. The meats were amazing... thin-sliced beef and pork belly (bacon!), three types of marinated chicken meat, boneless fish fillets, and some other stuff that, lacking any signage to identify it, we skipped (I'm guessing various organs -- liver and such... yikes). It was all super-cold, so I give them props for handling the meat properly. Indeed, it was so cold, the meat slices were freezing together, so I would just extricate a chunk of beef with about 10-15 slices and within a couple of minutes on my tray at the table, it thawed to the point of easy separation. There was another buffet table loaded with fresh produce, too... kangkong, kailan, oyster and straw mushrooms, noodles, and more. There was yet another table with six different types of sauces, all freshly made. And if none of those tickled your fancy, there was a station where you could make your own... all the traditional Thai ingredients from garlic to chilies to limes to shallots and more... and a big mortar and pestle so you could pound your spices fresh-to-order. There was even a container of fresh coconut milk for making curries if you wanted. It was brilliant. We only got two of the six sauces, but they were both absolutely amazing.

Waiting to be cooked

A portrait of happiness on aluminum

So we loaded up our trays with food and sat down to start cooking. Now, unfortunately, this picture doesn't really make it all look very appetizing. For whatever reason, it doesn't convey the heat and sizzle of the grill. But it was definitely hot... and the beef and bacon slices were our favorites. And as the meal wore on, the grill became coated with a thin layer of burned fats and juicy bits, most of which dribbled down into the moat full of broth. Towards the end of the meal, as you would expect, the broth was spectacularly flavorful. We couldn't stop eating. The kailan, cooked until tender in the broth, was simply the best I've ever had. So we sat there for over three hours, just enjoying a wonderful meal at a price that, quite simply, almost defied belief. At the end, we got some fresh watermelon and tossed it in our ice bucket to chill it down, then ate that as our dessert. We could barely walk when we finished, but we waddled back to the car, then drove back to the main street and found a nice, but basic, hotel for RM38 (about US$11.90). They offered free covered car parking, free WiFi in the rooms (wow), hot water, and air conditioning (in fact, the air-con unit in our room was brand-new). Amusingly, it had started raining by that time, and we had gotten our bags out of the car under the covered parking, and I was looking for my umbrella. After searching feverishly for 2-3 minutes and finally locating it deep under the passenger seat, literally as I popped it open, the rain stopped. I mean totally stopped. Nothing like being cruelly mocked by Mother Nature!

The Dannok McDonald's...
Probably the nicest place in town

The next morning, we finally got up and moving around 11 or 12 (Thailand is an hour behind Malaysia), and went to the rather nice McDonald's next door to the hotel. Ivan had seen their sign advertising "Corn Pies" and gotten himself all worked into a lather to try one. In the end, he got two, and a giant iced coffee. The McDonald's (McDonald'ses?) in Malaysia do not sell this Corn Pie, so he was super keen to try it. I had a couple of bites, and it was indeed delicious... very crispy and flaky. Even better than their Apple Pie. We later talked to a girl here in KL who works for corporate McDonald's and learned that the pie is not certified halal for whatever reason, so it's not served in Malaysia for that reason. It's not like it has pork in it, obviously, but something about it doesn't meet Malaysia's standards for halal certification, and since the McDonald's here are all halal restaurants, there are no corn pies. Sad, because they're really good, and given Malaysians' penchant for eating sweet corn as a dessert item, would doubtlessly sell very well.

Ivan and his Corn Pies

We drove a bit further into Thailand, but ultimately decided not to go all the way to Hat Yai, a good-sized city (Thailand's fourth-largest) about an hour north. So we turned around, drove back into Malaysia (which we had to do twice because, once again owing to the apathy part of the blend, the immigration folks couldn't be bothered to stamp our passports or collect our immigration cards as we exited Thailand). We also had to "export" my car, too, which consisted of handing the form back in. Then it was finally back to Malaysia.

Shortly after crossing the border, we took the new highway from Changlun to Kuala Perlis, stopping along the way to photograph some of the rice paddy fields. It was really a nice bit of scenery.

Looking north towards Thailand

So much GREEN... everywhere we looked

I love these flattened-looking trees!

Awaiting the ferry to Langkawi

Once we got to Kuala Perlis, a small seaside town very near the Thai border, we found a very muddy spot to leave my car, and took a couple of overnight bags and walked to the jetty and bought tickets for the 6 p.m. ferry to Langkawi, which takes about 70 minutes and costs RM18. You can see the general bedlam here in the waiting area. This was only half of the area... the whole boat was filled, I think... about 400 people. The seats were jammed in there like an AirAsia flight, too. Fortunately, Ivan and I both passed out and napped very shortly after the ferry got underway and woke up just as we were steaming into the waters around Langkawi.

This was my third time to Langkawi, maybe my fourth... I can't recall. It's a nice place to visit... quiet, nice beaches, lots of history and legend to learn about, and a big enough island to spend a few days exploring. As it turns out, we only stayed one night, but I think it'd be fun to go back and spend more time there and really wander around.

As we got off the boat, we were accosted by a swarm of taxi drivers, naturally, but one of the guys asked if we wanted to rent a car, which we did. I told him I wanted to spend about RM60-70, and he said that was fine. So we went to the big jetty arrival/departure building (it's like a small airport but without planes... restaurants, duty-free shops, the works) and waited for the car to be delivered. Once it arrived, we put our stuff in the back, I got in and sat down and looked at the utter despair of this vehicle, which I think was a mid-90s model of Proton that isn't even made anymore. Even in the dark, it looked pathetic. Honestly, my old Tiara was in better condition. So I actually got out, chased the rental people down and told them that this car simply wouldn't do. It was just a total piece of sad crap. So they made some phone calls and procured a much better Nissan Sentra for us. It cost a little more, but was totally worth it.

RM29! Yes!!

We went to the main town, Kuah, and hit the duty-free shops (Langkawi is a duty-free island), where once again, Ivan zeroed in on the chocolates, and I went for the booze. I scored a liter of Bacardi rum for a scant RM29 (just over US$9). A liter of Bacardi in KL costs upwards of RM150. We then ate a light dinner at a local restaurant -- just had fried noodles and Japanese beer (Sapporo... RM3 there, RM13-15 in KL). Then it was off to find a hotel. It didn't take us long to find a place... and it was only RM60 per night. Most unfortunately, as we discovered later, our room was over a karaoke bar and we had to endure a carousel of horrible, delusional "singers" drunkenly wailing into the microphone until 3 a.m. Unsurprisingly, it was pretty easy to drift off to sleep after they closed down.

The next day consisted of wandering the beach (Pantai Cenang), having pizza at Artisan's Cafe, shopping, and going to the really amazing Langkawi Cable Car and Sky Bridge at about 3 p.m. For whatever reason, I had never been there before, but I'm glad that's no longer the case. Very much worth the price of admission (RM30 for me, RM15 for Malaysians). It was completed in 2003 and is really an amazing piece of engineering. The steepest incline is 42°, one of the steepest in the world, and the longest free span of cable, which is almost alarming to behold from above, is a staggering 950m, which is over 3,100 feet long without any support. The Sky Bridge, which is accessible via a short walk down a steep forest-surrounded series of steps from the top of the cable car, is equally impressive. It's a single-point, side-spar cable-stayed bridge, that's dramatically curved and terminated on each end with a triangular viewing platform. At 650m (2,145 ft.) above sea level, the views of the sea, the numerous islands, and the forested peaks of Langkawi, are spectacular. We were really lucky with the weather... just enough clouds to lend interest and impact to the blue sky, without obscuring any of the land. I'll just post a series of pictures here, most of which need to be clicked on and enlarged to be fully appreciated...

Blue sky and clear water at Pantai Cenang

At one of my favorite streetside cafes, Artisan's...
pretty good pizzas here!

Cable car ride (left) over the forest canopy

Here's the drama: The 42-degree plunge along a
nearly 1-km length of unsupported cable

The Andaman Sea and a handful of islands in the distance,
from the Middle Station of the Cable Car ride

Approaching the Sky Bridge:
Not a place for acrophobes

Looking out on the horizontal cable section between the
Middle Station and Top Station

A full view of the amazing Sky Bridge from
the Cable Car as we began our descent

After spending a couple of hours at the Cable Car and Sky Bridge, we meandered back to Kuah and the jetty, so we could catch the final 7 p.m. ferry back to the mainland.

The view from the jetty as we boarded the ferry

We reclaimed my car, a muddy, filthy mess by this time, and headed east on the highway back to Changlun. There, we stopped for a dinner break, then got back on the road, which soon joined the proper North-South Highway, and the extortionate tolls recommenced. All told, we spent about RM125 in tolls and another RM200+ on gas. But what a fun trip! Oh, and on the five-hour journey from the northern extreme of Peninsular Malaysia back down to the KL area, it literally rained the entire time. The good news, though, is that my car was considerably cleaner when we arrived back home than it was when we left Kuala Perlis!

So on the road trip, because I've always found it important to note such details, we logged 1,069 km, or about 640 miles. It was definitely an enjoyable experience... one I'd certainly repeat, this time maybe going further into Thailand and/or staying longer on Langkawi!

Coming soon... a three-week trip back home to Colorado for Christmas and New Year's. I can't believe 2011 is almost over!

Window Panes... oops, I mean Windows Pains

2011-11-14T09:25:00.001-07:00

Well, at least this time I have an excuse for the delay in posting a new entry. I have two computers here in KL with me: a full-size laptop and a portable netbook. Over the course of a single weekend, both of them developed problems that rendered them unusable. The netbook's problem was easy enough to spot: the keyboard stopped working properly. I'd press "C" and get "y1k" or something on the screen. Probably 30-35% of the keys don't work at all now. I have no idea what caused this, but after a few days of not really doing anything about it, I hooked up an external USB keyboard so I could at least log in. The larger laptop started freezing and crashing at just about the same time, too. I'd been wanting to upgrade the operating system for quite awhile anyway (it's the truly awful Windows Vista), so this seemed as good a time as any. My plan was to back up everything I could, then take the whole computer to Low Yat Plaza in KL, a nightmarish rats' nest of tech-related shops densely packed into an aging five-story mall in the Bukit Bintang area (truly hell on earth during the weekends) and have them wipe the hard drive and install Windows 7. One of my friends here works in the computer industry, though, so he told me he could give me a copy of the operating system. So I took the money I'd have spent buying the OS here (considerably less, actually) and bought a new hard drive altogether, upgrading from 160 to 500GB and increasing the disk speed from 5400 to 7200 rpm, both pretty significant upgrades. Oddly enough, hard drives are among the few electronic items that are cheaper here than in the States. Usually, Americans enjoy a substantial cost savings on almost anything in the consumer electronics realm, but this exact hard drive was RM220 here, and when converted to Ringgit, RM375 in the US.

Unfortunately, the Nvidia video card that's part of my laptop does not work and play well with Windows 7 in this laptop's configuration, so I've been busily trying to find a working driver that will both avoid crashes and allow me to take full advantage of all the nifty Windows 7 visual goodies. It's been a giant pain, to say the least.

Another rainy afternoon at the pool (view from my balcony)

Meanwhile, we're very much in the rainy season here in KL now. It rains almost every day at one point or another (sometimes two or three times). We've had a couple of wild thunderstorms, too, which are always fun. We've also been enjoying relatively cooler weather. My electric bill, which has never even hit RM40 in a month here, dropped to a preposterous RM23 last month. I very seldom turn on the air conditioners here and it's reflected in the energy bill. I think if it's under RM20, you don't even have to pay at all... not sure about that, but that's what I hear.

Penang to Hat Yai... oh boy!

This weekend promises to be interesting. Two of my friends are participating in a 10K run across the Penang Bridge, so a group of five of us are going up to Penang for the weekend for that. The day after the run, a couple of us will continue north up into Thailand, something I've certainly never done before (driving into Thailand). From that point, we're just treating it as a road trip, really not specifically planning anything. We may venture as far as Hat Yai, or just explore the general southern Thailand area, then return to Malaysia, where we have given thought to driving to Kuala Perlis (extreme northern Malaysia) and taking the ferry to Langkawi for a day or two (and stocking up on some duty-free goodies). I'm not sure exactly when we'll be back to KL, but probably by the middle of next week. Should be an adventure, and I'll certainly take my camera!

I'm finding that having all the free time associated with working only part-time (and extremely part-time at that; usually only 5-6 hours a week) is kind of boring. I like work and like structure, so I've started looking for full-time work again... would be nice to have something to start in January or after Chinese New Year, which would push it to February.

One of my friends (who is also a photography buff) and I went to Taman Tasik Perdana a couple of weeks back... it's definitely a nice place in the city to find some relative tranquility and plenty of photo ops. We then hit KLCC and wandered around the park and briefly inside the mall (where I saw a huge sign completely mangling an English phrase). I'll wrap this up with some pictures and will write another entry after the upcoming trip.

This shot of a colorful hibiscus flower serves as
the wallpaper on my poor struggling laptop

Yeah, the Petronas Towers are still there... here's the usual shot

And here's a not-so-usual view of the towers in one of the park's reflecting balls.
It's a shame the surface of the sphere is etched and marred; otherwise, I think
this would be a really cool shot.

This is just sad. This is a floor-to-ceiling sign (a new
candy store is opening soon in KLCC). Did it not occur to anyone
that this doesn't make a bit of sense? Just change the "heavy"
to "heaven" and that's the phrase they were looking for.

Cherating and Impiana Resort: Finally, my first visit to the East Coast!

2011-09-24T08:09:00.000-06:00

Though the vast majority of Peninsular Malaysia's population lives on the western side of the peninsula, it's the east that unquestionably has the best beaches. Even discounting the breathtaking postcard-perfect beaches on the islands of the Perhentians, Redang, and others off the east coast, the actual coast of the mainland itself has beaches that surpass almost any to be found on the west coast.

Looking north along the beach towards the headland
(taken from Impiana Resort)

The small town of Cherating, in Pahang state, an easy three-hour drive from KL, doesn't have the best beaches, not by a long shot, but the beach is still quite nice. Clean water, gentle surf, and a charming, laid-back atmosphere in the village all lend themselves to the appeal of this long-established backpackers' spot. In three years of living in Malaysia, I had yet to venture across the peninsula over to the east coast, which at KL's latitude is only 145 miles (235 km) across. One of my friends from Singapore was up in KL visiting for a week, so we decided awhile back to take a few days and check out Cherating.

From bottom to top: Pineapples, durian, and longans

We left the haze and congestion of KL after a midday dim sum meal and headed east, hoping for clearer skies, which we found! The drive over was easy enough, using the seamless tandem of the Karak Highway (which can be dangerous owing to crazy drivers trying to negotiate the hairpin curves too quickly as the road crests the spine of the peninsula's highlands) and the East Coast Expressway (Lebuhraya Pantai Timur). One cool thing about driving on the highways here is the R&R plazas (that doesn't stand for "rest and relax," though it stands for Malay words that roughly mean the same thing, rehat (rest) and rawat (recreation)), most of which have a fresh fruit stand or two. Look at these pineapples... so big! Anyway, tolls for the whole one-way journey totaled RM31, which is about what I expected.

The suitably grand lobby at Impiana Resort

We stayed at the Impiana Resort, right on the beach. It was a nice place, though showing its age a bit. However, for the price (RM189/US$63++ per night, including breakfast buffet for two), it really was quite okay... I'd give it a 7 of 10 overall! The room was comfortable and clean, the food at the restaurant was pretty good, the pool was nice (although it inexplicably closed at 7 pm each evening), and the service was... well, you can't expect too much, right? It's still Malaysia, after all. On that note, I read something recently that a former Malaysian prime minister said. He lamented the fact that while Malaysia can afford first-class infrastructure, it remains mired in third-world mentality when it comes to understanding things like planning, service, and maintenance. Obviously this great truth is manifested spectacularly in the epic traffic jams of KL and Penang, but the service component is a major factor, too. In restaurants, in hotels, in shops and stores, there is simply a near-total lack of service. It apparently isn't expected, isn't demanded, and isn't provided. Here we were in a supposedly classy 4-star resort, and we weren't even escorted to our rooms, nor greeted upon arrival as we drove up under the porte-cochère. As for maintenance, I see the absence of that even here at my condo. Even though it's a reasonably nice, upscale place, there are numerous lights burned out around the grounds, and one lamppost that's perilously close to toppling over altogether. I think someone ran into it with their car. It could easily be remedied, but I can guarantee everyone that it won't be. And honestly, how hard is it to replace light bulbs? So the Prime Minister nailed it. But if the head of state can see such things and not effect change, obviously it's far beyond my power to do so... and so, like most Malaysians, I just tolerate it.

Waterlilies seen from the lobby of Impiana Resort

At Impiana, I never even had an inkling of expectation that we would be accompanied to our room. I figured they'd hand us the key and we'd head off ourselves, schlepping our own luggage all the way... and I was right. Since I have no such outrageous expectations of this supposed 4-star resort (and it's not), I wasn't disappointed at all. In fact, I thought Impiana was perfectly fine... but only by Malaysian standards. I wrote a review of the resort on TripAdvisor.com. I'll add the link here once it goes live on that site. Meanwhile, here are a few photos from around the resort, showing the room, the grounds, and the pool. In the first picture, take a look at the waterfall just to the left of the center. It's a nice touch, but the background is appalling. It's just the facade of the building, and not an attractive one at that, with the sad vertical blinds behind the glass, and the lone air-conditioner compressor sitting off to the right. It's one of those things that, with a little more effort in the execution (rocks, etc., to give a more natural, inviting look), could have been grand. The waterfall could easily have been the focal point of the pool, elevating it to a really nice resort-like experience. Instead, it just falls flat and almost looks industrial. Unfortunately, this is the case around here more often than not. Even painting the expanse of white concrete wall behind the waterfall to a darker color would really improve things, I think. Note the swim-up bar to the right... a very nice touch.

The inviting waters of Impiana's pool

The covered sunloungers by the pool

And here's the room... nothing opulent, but
clean and comfortable... very satisfactory!

And here's the view from the balcony of our room

Kailan with Oyster Sauce... yum!

Unquestionably, the highlight of the trip was the first night. We ate dinner at a small cafe in Cherating Lama (literally, "Old Cherating," the original village, which retains a whole lot of charm). We had ikan bakar (grilled fish -- we had white snapper) and assorted veggies, my favorite of which was kailan (one of the many marvelous Asian greens) sautéed in oyster sauce. After that, we popped into a little shack promoting various tours and activities, arranged or co-brokered by a man named Hafiz. The beaches of Cherating are one location in Malaysia where sea turtles come every year to lay their eggs. So we left our number with him with the understanding that if the rangers spotted turtles that night, they'd give us a call. Sure enough, around 10 p.m., we got the call, so we headed off to the designated rendezvous point to meet our guide, who we then followed to the beach.

There's nothing in this photo for scale, but the turtle's head
is roughly the size of a large cantaloupe

Using only dimmed flashlights, the rangers led us to one female green sea turtle who was busily digging in the sand to lay her eggs. Green turtles never lay eggs in consecutive years, but typically will lay eggs 2-3 times during one mating season. A single clutch of eggs can contain between 100-200 eggs. The female spends about three hours on the beach, the great majority of that time spent digging. There was no actual egg-laying action taking place here yet, so we walked quite a ways down the beach and found another female who was just completing her egg-laying. These turtles aren't as huge as the giant leatherback turtles, but they're nowhere near small. These females were nearly four feet (1.2 m) in length, and a cursory bit of research suggests they probably weighed around 300 lbs. (136 kg) each. Their front flippers are enormous, and though they are well-suited to propulsion in the sea, on land, the turtle is quite ungainly.

The telltale path of a green sea turtle

No sooner had she finished depositing her eggs in her nest (and gotten a barnacle-scraping, with the ranger slicing off two of the parasitic organisms, one from her head, one from her left front flipper) than she lurched back towards the sea, leaving a distinctive trail in her wake. Unfortunately, poachers are all too familiar with this trail and can easily find sea turtle eggs, which must remain in the sandy nest for 45-75 days, giving unscrupulous people plenty of time to find and steal the eggs, which are prized in parts of Asia. Since the green turtle is an endangered species, the rangers (who were from the local turtle sanctuary) promptly dug up the eggs to take them to the sanctuary for protective incubation. Upon hatching, the baby turtles are returned to the same location from where they were removed, and released, where they instinctively head into the waiting sea. This affords the hatchlings a doubly increased chance of survival over just leaving the eggs where they were laid: First, even if the eggs aren't poached by humans, they can fall prey to any number of maladies during the incubation period and fail to develop. Second, the trek to the ocean after hatching on the beach is the most dangerous time in the turtle's entire life. Many baby turtles never make it to the water, getting picked off by birds, monkeys, lizards, even crabs. Released under the supervision of conservation-minded people, the turtles stand a significantly improved chance of initial survival.

Me with two of the hours-old hatchlings. The turtle
on the right is particularly eager to be released!

One of the most remarkable things about sea turtles is that many undertake epic migrations to return to the exact same beach they hatched at decades earlier in order to lay their own eggs as adults. So the two females we saw, in all likelihood, had been hatched on that very beach many years ago. Green turtles can live up to 80 years in the wild, and don't start breeding until they're 20-30 years old, so how they find their way back to the same beach they were born at, often well over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away all those years later is a great mystery.

Time for a beach ping-pong marathon!

The second turtle we saw left behind a clutch of 108 eggs, which look almost exactly like ping-pong balls, and even feel similarly, for the shell is semi-soft at the freshly laid stage. The eggs were collected rather unceremoniously in a plastic grocery bag and taken off to the sanctuary later. I mentioned to my friend that, really, these "rangers" could actually be poachers, and we'd never know... not only stealing eggs, but taking money from unsuspecting tourists, too! The only way we could really know would be if we saw them actually releasing newly hatched turtles back into the ocean. In a great stroke of providence, a batch of baby turtles had indeed just hatched that night, and they brought them (in a shopping basket, which was amusing)... probably a hundred tiny hatchlings, only a few hours old. So after seeing the adult turtles and a big clutch of ping-pong egg balls, we even got to release baby turtles into the South China Sea, all under a big full moon. It really couldn't have been scripted any better and we paid only RM30 to the guides for this remarkable experience, about the cost of seeing the latest crappy movie at the cinema in my hometown. As I learned not too long ago, a great maxim for living life is, "Buy experiences, not things." So we did just that. The second night, we did it again... this time, trading turtles on the beach for fireflies on the river.

For these baby turtles, an 80-year journey begins with
a moonlit 20-meter dash into the sea

The tour guide mentioned earlier, Hafiz, is also an expert on fireflies and leads a boat tour down the Cherating River at night, so we did that. I think we set off at around 8:30 pm, into the inky darkness of the river. The boat was full, with six adults, three small children, and Hafiz, who had given a short, but remarkably educational pre-departure lecture on fireflies in general, and on the specific species we were to see. He also (to my amusement) asked us not to swat or smash the fireflies, as they would be flying to us and landing on us and the boat. I grew up chasing fireflies (not much of a chase, really... fireflies are among the easiest bugs on Earth to catch) and know that they're harmless. Obviously there are no photos from the firefly river tour; it was far too dark. However, suffice it to say it was well worth the RM15 we spent. The tour lasted a little over an hour, and we saw plenty of fireflies, many of who paid up-close and personal visits to us in the boat. Now I really want to go to Kuala Selangor, which is not far from my place (maybe a 30- or 40-minute drive) and see the fireflies there. It's a different species and those fireflies actually synchronize their flashing, which I'm sure is an amazing spectacle.

Tong Juan's famous stuffed crabs

For dinner on the final evening of the short holiday, we drove the short 15-km distance north to the town of Chukai, just across the state line in Terengganu. One of my friends in KL is from the nearby town of Kuantan and recommended this place in Chukai called Tong Juan for their stuffed crabs. Located right by the river there, the ambiance-challenged restaurant serves up stuffed crabs for RM8 each. Now, perhaps it's because I was born and raised on the Gulf Coast in the US, but to me, stuffed crabs are nothing new, nor anything fancy. But this place is famous among Malaysians (who consider RM8, nearly US$3, for a single stuffed crab, somehow, to be a bargain), so we had to try it. We got the last remaining table and ordered four crabs, a couple of vegetables (kailan and kangkong), and two young coconuts (to drink). The crabs are stuffed with a mixture of crab meat and filler (breading, herbs, etc.) and to me, weren't seasoned enough. The resultant product was almost devoid of any real flavor, although it was certainly fine to eat. Then the whole thing is dipped in an egg mixture, I think, and fried. Our total bill came to about RM60 and honestly, the meal was not worth that price tag. In KL, two people can eat good food and a lot of it for that price. And I know with certainty that I could make stuffed crabs at home that taste better. The ones at Tong Juan were fine, but bland. Naturally, there was no hint of gracious service whatsoever, which is, regrettably, to be expected. So to recap... rubbishy service, a total lack of ambiance, and good, but unexceptional food. Though I think the overall meal was certainly okay, this is not a place I'd patronize again, especially having to drive out of the way to get to it.

It's not often you get to walk along a multi-level beach.
Here, the upper level was a good two meters higher than
the lower level... all courtesy of the monsoon

On the same day, before we went to Chukai, we went back to "Turtle Beach" to see it during daylight hours; there were some really nice rock outcroppings and right-on-the-beach jungle I wanted to see. It's really a nice stretch... and curiously, the size of the beach increases and decreases significantly with the seasonal monsoon. Six months earlier, the beach extended 100m further out to sea. Each year, though, as the monsoonal flow shifts, the sea consumes the beach. You can see clearly in this picture the different places the water reached as it reclaimed the sand, resulting in a dramatic two-level beach.

We also got to see a beach monkey! The little bugger was probably casing the joint for a future raid on a clutch of freshly hatched turtles. I'll toss in a few more pictures from the walk here, captioned accordingly.

Monkey on the prowl... I think it's a macaque

Walking along a desolate beach as the day's light wanes

Less than 50m from the sea, the sand gives
way abruptly to dense foliage...

The biodiversity of the jungle so close to the ocean was amazing
(Click to enlarge and you'll see)

This is a good one to enlarge as well. I'm not sure what these
are (a species of barnacle, perhaps), but they were all over
this rock, particularly along the crevices

More turtle tracks

Deep water- and wind-eroded striations in a massive rock formation
that's likely been there for hundreds of millennia

Small flowers on a beach-bound vine

Overall, the trip was just really nice. Like I said, I've lowered my expectations here to the point where the things I've mentioned don't even ping my radar until I evaluate the experience later in my head. By local standards, this was a really enjoyable holiday and I'd definitely recommend a few days in Cherating to any KL resident wanting to chill out and enjoy some time on a beach without having to board a plane or spend a fortune.

House and Home: The Move to Perdana Emerald and a Trip to Colorado

2011-09-09T13:39:00.000-06:00

A snow-dusted Lookout Mountain seen from my mom's neighborhood

Well, it was a great two weeks back in Denver, despite the wacky weather. May is late spring in the US, and as a transitional month, Colorado's weather, which is subject to wild changes at any time, is even more difficult to predict. But usually, this time of year is pretty warm if nothing else. Not this time! It was cold and rainy almost the entire time I was home... when I was picked up at the airport, it was about 6°C/43°F and raining. That was to be the theme for nearly the entire stay. People were wandering around in a daze, mumbling, "It never rains this much in Denver!" In the two weeks I was there, we literally had rain, snow, slush, hail, thunderstorms, and even a few small tornadoes just north of the city. Went out with my friends... rain. Went to a Rockies baseball game with my mom... rain (and cold... and windy). Even when I went to the airport to leave... yup, more rain. We had roaring fires in my mother's fireplace, marveling that it was just on the verge of summer and we were all freezing to death. Crazy Colorado weather.

Brrr! 4°C on May 20th... insane!

Yeah, it was every bit as good as it looks.

On the day after the Rockies game, we went to this great restaurant in downtown Denver called Rio Grande (or "The Rio," as everyone calls it), a place that has not only great Mexican food, but is justifiably famous for its margaritas. They limit you to three during any one visit, and with good reason: these bad boys are strong! They're the classic recipe made with quality tequila, triple sec, and fresh lime juice (not sweet and sour mix), so the finished drink is a totally transparent yellow-green color. Delicious! And take a look at that steak tostada... and the mounds of fresh guacamole on the plate behind it (this is a seriously great photo to click on and enlarge)... ahhh, I do miss good Mexican food. I've managed to find two places in KL where I can get decent Mexican food, but obviously there's no pork (no carnitas, no carne adobada, no chicharrónes... sigh, now I'm drooling), and it's even less authentic than America's version of Mexican food. So basically, the US has fake Mexican food, and Malaysia has fake Americanized Mexican food. Talk about diminishing returns. If I get really desperate, I can go to Chili's here for fajitas. Nothing says fake-but-delicious Mexican food like a sizzling iron plate full of fajitas.

So while I was in Denver, my mom put me to work, as usual. She typically has a list of things for me to do when I am there visiting. This time it was digging up hundreds of pounds of rocks from her back porch and replacing them with bricks, which was complicated by the incessant rain and cold. However, we got it done, and the finished product looked much nicer than it had looked before, but a noticeable dip in the field of bricks might necessitate a fix on a later visit.

So it was a fun trip, and as always, great to visit with family and friends... and stock up on all that great stuff I can't get in Malaysia. Hehe.

Move-in day: 1/2 misery, 1/2 excitement

Almost immediately upon getting back to KL, I had to start wrapping up things with my job and prepping for the big 1-km move to my new place. Even though I consciously avoid acquiring stuff, I still have managed to accumulate a fair bit of it in the time I've lived here, so I got some empty boxes from the supermarket in my neighborhood. (It looked like I was running a small retail operation for cat food and eggs, I think, since those comprised most of the boxes.)

Evening at Perdana Emerald

So the move has now been completed and I'm slowly but surely getting settled in the new place. I definitely like Perdana Emerald. The facilities are great, the pool is gorgeous, and the unit is considerably larger than my other one. Truth be told, it's not quite as nicely fitted and renovated, but it's still very much acceptable. I had to look at nearly twenty units before settling on this one. I actually even have a dryer, so for the first time in over two years, I won't have to hang my clothes out on the balcony every time to dry them.

_____________

Nearly three months later...

Yes, I suck, I know. I think the only reason I'm so sporadic with these updates is because putting photos in this stupid blog is such a pain. Seriously, if you ever want create a photo-heavy blog, look elsewhere. Blogger.com is definitely not the best choice. [Edited to add: Actually, they've completely retooled the interface now, photos seem easier to insert, and there's even apparently the option of adding captions to photos... functionality I have longed for. However, after publishing, it still looks pretty crappy, doesn't it? And it seems I can only insert photos where there's a paragraph break, rather than in the paragraph, as before. Sigh. Curse you, blogspot.com!]

The last few weeks have been remarkably dry overall here in KL, even by the relatively dry standards of June and July. We still get rain, but it's pretty infrequent. As a result, and because of all the construction in the neighborhood, I have to mop my floor in the new condo at least twice a week to keep it from getting too dusty. (I open the windows pretty frequently to capture the nice breezes... so it's a trade-off.) It's also been pretty hazy these last two weeks, which is pretty uncommon this late in the dry season. Hope it subsides soon, because I don't like hazy skies at all. Here's a shot of my new living room, shortly after moving in. The sofa is vastly more comfortable than the one at my previous place! It doesn't really come across in this photo, but the thing is huge, too. I can lie fully and comfortably on it, and I'm six feet tall (183cm). Awesome.

Boiling water and a happy ice cube on the
same cooking element. Magic!

So I bought a new induction cooker quite recently. These haven't really taken off in North America (for reasons unknown), but in Asia and Europe, especially where kitchens tend to be smaller, they're quite popular. They're also quite cheap here... at least mine was (RM179... US$60). I knew a little about them, but only after purchasing one was I aware of how radically different they are from conventional ways of cooking. They may look like a regular smooth-top stove, but that's where the similarity ends. The element, when turned on, generates a strong electromagnetic field. When a pan is placed on the surface of the cooker, that field induces an electrical current inside the pan's metal, stimulating the molecules, which vibrate at some 30,000-50,000 times per second. Since iron is a poor conductor of electrical current, that resistance is (rapidly) converted to heat energy, so the cooking vessel actually becomes the source of heat. The induction cooker itself does not generate heat at all. I snapped a picture of a small pot sitting off-center on the element, water boiling merrily away and an ice cube sitting unscathed on another part of the element. Very cool (literally and figuratively). The only real potential drawback is that not all pots and pans work. They must be ferrous; that is, containing iron. So usually, anything cast iron or stainless steel (which is an alloy composed primarily of iron) works brilliantly and most of my cookware here works with it. A couple (aluminum) don't. I tested the efficiency and speed of induction cooking by heating a liter of cold tap water to a rolling boil in an uncovered pot. In the induction cooker, it took 3 minutes and 30 seconds. On the gas cooker, at high, it took 5 minutes and 40 seconds, and the handles of the pot were scorching hot afterwards because of all the heat that radiated up the sides of the pot. No such problem with the induction cooker. I've become an instant fan of this method of cooking. It doesn't heat up the kitchen the way the gas burners do. (About 45% of the energy produced by a gas burner is wasted, while only 10% of induction-generated heat goes to waste.) So there ya go... you probably never thought you'd learn something about induction cooking by reading a blog about life in Kuala Lumpur.

So really not much to report. I went down to Singapore for an overnight trip last week, and will be going to the east coast of Malaysia for the first time soon... a three-day trip to Cherating Beach, about a three-hour drive from KL. Really looking forward to that! I'll definitely post photos.

Professional medical bandaging, KL style

One other saga that seems to be nearing resolution is with my eyes. I thought about writing an entire entry about it and calling it, "A not-so-jocular case of the ocular," but that just made me a little nauseous, so I'll just regale you with the story here. Many moons ago, back in November of last year, I had a stye on my left eye. Though quite common, simply resulting from blocked oil glands on the eyelid, I had never had one before. So I went to my regular doctor to get it tended to, but he was out of the office that day, but had a guy filling it. I assumed he was an actual medically trained physician. My mistake. He first tried to anesthetize my eye by spraying some sort of local anesthetic directly in my face. It was cold as ice and caused far more discomfort than it ever could have precluded to begin with, but to make matters worse, it didn't really even work. The guy next took a needle and punctured the stye, which hurt like all hell, and then pinched the thing to squeeze the pus out. Can't tell you how wonderful that felt. Then he half-assedly taped some gauze to my face and sent me on my way. Good lord. A ringing endorsement for medical tourism in Malaysia this was certainly not.

I Only Have Eye (drops) for You

While it did indeed relieve the visible symptoms of the stye, it wound up causing far more long-term problems. Lancing and draining a stye like he did is the first thing you're told specifically not to do with even a cursory check on Wikipedia, so I have to wonder what little backwater kampung he got his medical training in. So yeah, with the stye punctured, the bacteria that caused the thing to begin with were free from the corral, so to speak, and ran willy-nilly all over my eye. A rub, a poke, and the bacteria spread to the right eye, too. Now this didn't cause blindness or any major trauma, just months of dry eyes, watery eyes, sometimes one of each, itchy and tired eyes, you name it. I went to one specialist who gave me a vial of expensive eye drops (from Germany) and a bottle of fish oil capsules. That turned out to all be utterly useless, so thankfully the company paid the bill on that one. For months, I tried one sort of eye drop and/or antibiotic topical ointment (for the skin surrounding the eyes) after another. Look at this pharmacy full of empty containers I amassed over time! I set them all up on my coffee table and took this picture just to highlight how insane this has all been... and this honestly isn't all of them. Add about five or six more dropper vials, plus a tube of Neosporin ointment, and that would be complete. Finally, a few weeks ago, I went to a different eye doctor in Damansara Utama who prescribed a good (US-made, hooray) antibiotic eye drop and a lubricating gel to replenish the corneal fluid. Apparently, the anesthetic that the quack of a fake doctor sprayed in my eye damaged the cornea of my eye and the subsequent staph infection made it near-impossible for my eye to heal itself properly. So anyway, it's on the mend now, and hopefully it will be back to full normalcy soon — a year of eye-related misery. The moral? Don't ever let idiot substitute doctors treat you.

Dear Humans,

Psst! Hey there. We can't read.

Sincerely, The Dogs

Finally, on a lighter note, I always snap pictures of funny signs around town when I have my camera handy. Given the propensity Malaysians have for doing odd things with the English language, there's not a shortage of subject matter. I'll try to include these pictures here and there. This one was taken at a playground in Bangsar recently. I was meeting a former business contact for lunch nearby, and parked my car near the playground. When I was walking back to my car, this sign caught my eye. I looked at it, and as the definition of "stray dog" crystallized in my mind, the humor became evident. I usually have to explain it to my local friends here, who never see any problem with the sign. A stray dog, by definition, I tell them, is a dog without a human owner. They're strays. Street dogs. So unless these owner-less dogs can read (and read English, no less), this sign is completely pointless. Ha ha! So if you see any illiterate stray dogs out there, be sure to tell them: Stay away from the playground in Bangsar!

Transitions

2011-05-11T11:47:00.001-06:00

I’m writing this from Tokyo, where I’m laid over watching a steady afternoon rain shower while awaiting my transpacific flight to the US. For the first time, I’m flying into Seattle as the port of entry. Anything to avoid Los Angeles, an airport I truly deplore. The 7-hour flight up to Japan from Singapore was great. I had three seats to myself on a nicely outfitted Boeing 777-200, slept over half the flight, got fed twice, and watched some TV shows on the nice little personal widescreen LCD. It was even a touch screen, eliminating the need for the retractable-cord remote. Honestly, that was probably the nicest aircraft I’ve flown on… and it’s Delta. I’ve been quite impressed with their international service as I’ve flown with them the last couple of trips back to the US. The meals are not that great, but they’re okay. If they notched up the food quality a bit, flights on that particular aircraft would compare favorably with some of the best Asian carriers.

This is just a short visit home – a couple of weeks away from the stress and uncertainty of my life in KL as of late. Most this has arisen from having to move soon… my landlord sold the condo I’ve been living in, and the new owner is planning to live in it, not rent it out, so I’ve been looking at numerous places over the past few weeks, trying to find something acceptable, but without much luck until literally the day I flew out from KL. I found a nice unit at Perdana Emerald, a condo development just down the street from where I live now. So I’ll get to stay in Damansara Perdana, after all. Even though it’s being ridiculously overbuilt, as I mentioned previously, the fact of the matter is that it’s a very small enclave and there are, at the moment, only seven condo complexes from which to choose. Three of those are immediately bumped off the list for me for their units being either far too small (Ritze Perdana and its sequel, Ritze 2) or far too large (Armanee Terrace). So that left only four developments, and I wasn’t particularly keen on two of them, leaving only the place I currently live, and Emerald. I figure these must be pretty decent places to live, because neither of them have lots of available units for rent, unlike Metropolitan Square and the tragically misnamed Perdana Exclusive. (Seriously, there’s nothing exclusive about it at all… though it’s certainly an okay place, it is, in fact, the oldest and least impressive of all the developments in the township.)

The condo I found in Emerald is substantially larger than my current place. Still three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but this one is over 1,400 square feet and on the tenth floor overlooking Emerald’s excellent pool. I confirmed acceptance of this unit literally three hours before setting off for my flight down to Singapore. I’m not that happy about having to move, but I’m hugely relieved that I found a place. I hadn’t realized how stressful the looming homelessness was to me until I felt the weight of that stress lifted once I settled a new residence.

Another source of uncertainty lately has been my job. I won’t go into great detail here, but suffice it to say I’m looking for other challenges and opportunities, and one of those coincided with my time in Singapore yesterday. I timed my layover there to give me ample time to meet with someone from a company that is looking to expand into Malaysia. We’ll see how things progress – there’s no hurry to jump into something else, and I have a couple of other options in KL as well, so as things evolve, I will write about it here. Expect some changes, though.

Let’s see, what else… oh, car news. I’ve officially sold the Proton Tiara. I had been letting one of my good friends drive it for the past few months, but the road tax and insurance renewal was coming due, so I figured it was as good a time as any to sell it off. I listed it online and sold it within a day, for about RM1000 less than what I initially paid for it back in September 2008. What a great, cheap, crappy little car it was for me. In other car-related news, I had my first KL fender-bender (in my Kia) about three weeks ago. One of my friends and I were driving in a massive jam on a Saturday afternoon, heading to dim sum lunch (naturally), and in the stop-and-go traffic, we were stopped when a car slammed into us from behind. After taking a few seconds to ascertain what had actually happened (it’s amazing how easy it is to be confused and shaken when something like that happens so suddenly), I got out of my car, fully expecting to see my rear bumper in shambles or hanging off the car or something. I was stunned, though, to see that it was barely even scuffed! Now, the other guy’s car, a Perodua Myvi, was a big hot mess. The front was crumpled, the headlights were all wonky, and the radiator was busily disgorging its contents onto the road. Wow. The Myvi looks nice enough, and is indeed Malaysia’s most popular car for I think three years running now. However, if you want to play bumper cars on the highways of KL, this is not a good choice of car for you. When telling my friends in KL about the accident, exactly none of them were surprised that the Myvi fared so poorly in even a minor collision. Anyway, the other driver wanted to just pay for the damage rather than getting the police and insurance companies involved, so we exchanged information, and, still a bit rattled, my friend and I headed off for our lunch.

Fast-forward a week, and I took my car to my beloved mechanics and asked if they could refer me to a body shop to repair and paint the bumper. Even better, they just took care of it for me. I left my car with them and picked it up the next day, completely repaired. It was only RM280 for the bumper and RM30 for a new registration number plate (the “5” was broken). So I texted the guy who had hit me with the information, and within 15 minutes he had “banked in” the money to one of my friend’s bank account, and my friend just withdrew the cash and passed it to me. It was virtually effortless, and I’m so grateful that the guy who hit me turned out to be honest and efficient like that. That said, I hope I can go the rest of my time in Malaysia without any more accidents!

So that should get everyone up to date on the last month or so. I’m looking forward to some “down time” back in Colorado. It’ll be great to see my friends and family, and it will even be nice to have some relatively cooler weather for a change. We’ve gone nearly a week without any rain in KL and it’s been stupendously hot and sunny for days. It’s bad enough that locals, who virtually never discuss the weather, are doing just that. Okay, about an hour until my flight leaves… I think it’s about 8 or 9 hours to Seattle, but not sure. Will catch up later and post some pics!

Eating my way through KL... And the slow destruction of Damansara Perdana

2011-04-06T21:22:00.028-06:00

I can honestly say that, after all my time living here, I'm really not completely enamored of actual local Malaysian cuisine. It's all quite okay, but for a country that lies between the world-famous food of Thailand and the almost criminally underrated cuisine of Indonesia, I have found the food in Malaysia to be kind of uninspired. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy some local dishes, and there's no way I've tried everything, so there may yet be something out there that would thrill me. But for the most part, the cuisine here just seems to suffer by comparison to that of its neighbors.

When I say this, I'm only referring specifically to "indigenous" foods. Many of the foods available here are wonderful, but they mostly come from other cultures and regions. In that sense, KL can be a food-lover's paradise. Taiwanese, Chinese, Thai, Indian (north and south – the cuisine is markedly different), Japanese, Korean, Western (to varying degrees of authenticity, it has to be said)... there is no shortage of good restaurants in the KL area. A shortage of decent service, yes, but that's to be saved for another entry... :)

Being something of a creature of habit, I have gotten into a routine of visiting a few choice restaurants on a regular basis. I go for dim sum almost every weekend. This style of eating, hugely popular in Hong Kong, is thought to have originated in what is today the Guangdong province of southern China. Various dishes and dumplings, either steamed, pan-fried, or deep-fried, are served hot and fresh along with a pot of Chinese tea, an important part of any dim sum meal. Though I have frequented a number of dim sum restaurants in the area over the last couple of years, the place my friends and I always go now is called Jin Xuan, in Damansara Jaya. They have five outlets, but this one is among the best. The dumplings are all made fresh by hand onsite, and they do a booming business, especially on weekends. The quality of the food is very good, the prices are terrific (seldom more than about RM20 per person and you leave totally full), and even the service is good, particularly by Malaysian service standards. This explains the popularity of the place. Among my favorites are the siew mai (seasoned pork and shrimp in a dumpling wrap, topped with crab roe), something called a sharkfin dumpling, shown here in the round basket on the right, which is not made from shark fin, but so named because I guess it kind of resembles one? I don't know. I have a serious moral issue with shark fin soup, so I only order this because it's "shark fin" in name only. It's similar to the siew mai, but tastes a bit different, so I don't know... maybe different seasonings? I also love the pan-seared "potsticker" dumplings, served with shredded ginger and rice vinegar. Lo mai kai is another favorite... sticky rice, pressed in a mold with chunks of chicken, mushrooms, and a slice of glazed, pork sausage (called lap cheong). Very tasty! We get a big pot of tea (my favorites are the semi-fermented oolong teas like tikuanyin or cha wong) and just order the little baskets of food until we're full.

Another favorite of mine is Japanese food. For awhile now, my restaurant of choice has been Nihon Kai, just off of Old Klang Road, not far from my office in Midvalley. Their sashimi is great, the portions are generous, and the prices are incredibly reasonable (Japanese food tends to usually be on the pricey side by KL standards). One of my favorites to order is the sashimi don (pictured), a good-sized bowl of thick slabs of various sashimi on a bed of vinegared rice. It's served with a bowl of miso soup, and costs only RM26, a great price for such a fresh, generous selection of fish. Salmon butteryaki and crispy tempura are also great choices here.

However, recently, I discovered that the restaurant in my own neighborhood, called MAIU, had rolled out an everyday promotion where you can eat and drink all you want, ordering from a menu (not a buffet line), for a ridiculously low RM38 per person. It's just insane. The food there is outstanding... fresh, delicious, prepared and presented wonderfully. You just order from the menu of selections, and they keep bringing it. Sashimi, sushi, teppanyaki, soups, soba noodles, tempura, yakitori, tofu, salads, on and on... it's just an orgy of delicious free-flow Japanese cuisine, and all for barely more than US$12 per person. Their maki rolls are amazing, and in particular, the California maki is hands-down the best I've ever had. Do yourself a favor and enlarge these pics... if you're a fan of Japanese food, you will be drooling.

Korean food is also very easy to find here, owing to the fairly substantial Korean expat population in the city. I can't remember what this dish is called, but it was really tasty. Typical of Korean meals, there's an array of small dishes, too -- little tidbits and such. Very nice. This was at a restaurant in Midvalley; the Korean restaurants in the typical Korean enclaves like Ampang and Mont Kiara are even better, especially for Korean BBQ, which is delicious!

• • • • •

So in non-gastronomic news, back in January, I got a text message from the owner of my condo... "Ohhh so sorry to inform you, but I've decided to sell off my condo." Nice, right? Long story short, it indeed sold (rapidly, I might add), and the new owner does not wish to rent the unit out, so I have to move. Real estate transactions are painfully slow in Malaysia, however, so I still have a couple of months before I need to clear out, even though the unit sold in early March. So far, my search for a new place to live has been fruitless... and discouraging. I got lucky with my current place in that it was only perhaps the fourth place I viewed. So far now, I've looked at over a dozen, all unsuitable for one reason or another. I want to stay in the same area, even though MK Land are trying their level best to destroy Damansara Perdana. (Deep breath before the rant...)

Like all developers, they can't stand to see a single patch of land remain in its natural state. So, even though there is clearly no demand for new office space in the area (as evidenced by the vast number of currently empty shoplots), they're building a massive multi-block trade center, as well as not one, but TWO new 19-story office towers, and another substantial block to the new (and woefully underutilized) Neo Damansara. They're expanding and adding onto the already sprawling and sadly under-occupied Metropolitan Square. There are cranes everywhere you look as you enter the small township of Damansara Perdana. (Seriously, I think I eyeballed nine of them at last count. It's obscene.) They constructed another condo block in the mold of Ritze Perdana, unimaginatively calling this one "Ritze Perdana 2," like it's a sequel or something. Like its progenitor, most of the condos at RP2 are little 450-square-foot studios, vastly overpriced. They're also building a sequel to the stupendously big Armanee Terrace, which is at the complete opposite end of the size spectrum. These condos are all two-story units, each at 2,500 square feet or more. And even though they're 5-6 times the size of RP2, they're only 2.5 times the price, which really illustrates the insanity of paying over RM300K for a small studio apartment in PJ.

As if all this madness wasn't enough for the one tiny road we have in Damansara Perdana, Maxis is digging up the street to lay fiber optic cables for what I guess will finally be real broadband Internet (not the 700 KB/sec. rubbish they try to pass off as broadband now). And, in a final assault on what's rapidly becoming a not-so-pleasant place to live, MK Land are utterly destroying a vast swath of the hillside jungle near Armanee Terrace. It looks like a bomb was detonated there.. take a look. These are "then and now" pictures from roughly the same general vantage point, which is almost hard to believe. One picture was taken in November 2008; the other, just last week (click to enlarge for the full dose of despair). Residents and owners of Armanee Terrace and Perdana View condos have formed a "Save Our Hill" campaign at this point, but honestly, it seems a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has already left. The hill and jungle have been pretty much destroyed at this point already. Ahhh, progress. (That said, I'm happy to see that people at least do care that their neighborhood is being methodically eviscerated. If I had paid RM800,000 for a unit at the original Armanee Terrace, at least partly on the strength of the beauty and serenity of the adjacent jungle and hillside, I'd be furious at what's taking place there now.)

Further up the hill, the 88-unit Rafflesia development lumbers ever onward, at least as behind schedule as Armanee Terrace 2. The fact that a high-end luxury development was named for a giant, putrid, stinky flower isn't the most confusing thing, though. Here in Malaysia, they call these type of link houses "semi-Ds," standing for "semi-detached." This honestly makes no sense at all, even by odd UK standards, from which Malaysia takes most of its cues. (In the UK, a semi-D is two houses joined by a common wall. In the US, we call this a duplex, but here, "duplex" is used to refer to a double-story condo.) Anyway, the English language has a word already for this so-called semi-detached state: ATTACHED. A house cannot really be "semi-detached." It's either attached or it's detached. In the US, these units would be called townhouses or row houses. I guess they look nice enough for Malaysian homes, but their selling price is completely insane — in the neighborhood of RM2 to 3 million per unit. This in a country where the average annual income is about RM25,000... that's nearly a million US dollars for a townhouse. I just don't understand this at all. (Okay, my bad... I got some pics, and in looking closely at these houses, they're not like row houses after all; even though they're literally only a couple of meters apart, they are technically not joined, so each house is really one half of a whole, thus meeting the UK definition of "semi-detached," if not the English language's definition. I can still make fun of the name, though, right?)

I really don't think Damansara Perdana is going to be a nice place to live in a very few years from now. They're completely overbuilding it without improving the infrastructure at all. There is still only one road in and out, and really no way to expand or add to it. Further, there doesn't seem to be any demand for this level of development. The vacancy rate in the existing business centers is already so high, one wonders what the hell they're thinking by building MORE commercial centers. For my part, I keep hoping the exposed hillside where they've done so much damage will all just collapse and bury all of their heavy equipment, destroy their fancy sales center, and scuttle their evil plans.

Recap: Starting 2011 in Thailand

2011-03-02T20:16:00.024-07:00

Once again, apologies for taking so long to post this entry. I wrote most of it many weeks ago. I'll post it as I originally wrote it, even though nearly two months have passed since doing so...

First off, a very happy new year to everyone as we kick off 2011. This is the start of the second decade of the century/millennium, and it’s so hard to believe the last ten years have gone by so quickly!

This is actually my third “new year” celebration since moving to Kuala Lumpur, and curiously, none of those celebrations have occurred (for me) in KL. In 2009, I was in Penang; in 2010, I went back to Denver for the holidays, and this year, I spent six days in Phuket, Thailand. This was my first trip back there since March 2009, so it’s been awhile. I met my friend Dendy from Jakarta, along with one of his friends, who lives in Penang, and his friends, who are all also from KL, so there wound up being six of us for the New Year’s festivities.

Currently, I’m sitting in the rather crowded Phuket International Airport waiting for my flight back to KL. I’m flying this time on Qatar Airways, one of the only six 5-star airlines in the world. It was actually cheaper to fly here on Qatar than on budget AirAsia, and half the price of Malaysia Airlines, so it was a no-brainer. To make things better, I was told at check-in that I was being upgraded to business class. That surely has to bode well for the new year, right? It’s a harbinger of great things to come!

We were torn between Hong Kong and Phuket as a vacation destination, but ultimately chose Phuket because we figured it would be a lot more fun for the New Year celebrations. I think we made the right choice! We stayed in Patong, the most happening beach town on the island, and of our five nights in Phuket, we went out clubbing and bar-hopping on four of them. At some of the clubs, the action doesn’t really even get started until after midnight. It was a blast.

Unquestionably the highlights of the trip were the actual night of New Year’s Eve itself and, after the effects of that night’s excesses subsided, the day trip that three of us took a couple of days later.

One thing about New Year’s in Patong: There is absolutely no shortage of fireworks. They don’t even bother waiting until midnight.. from about 10:00 p.m., and continuing for well over four hours, the fireworks never stopped, peaking from about 11:30 to 12:30. Patong Bay is a large, crescent-shaped bay, and all along the beach, fireworks were being launched in varying scales. Fireworks safety is all but nonexistent in Thailand, so although there were plenty of “professional” shows, there were even more small-scale launches of skyrockets and firework bombs. Add to this the awesome spectacle of hundreds upon hundreds of Thai sky lanterns being released over the sea, seen here, and the sky was lit up for hours.

For our countdown, we all went up to the third-floor open-air garden terrace at our guest house with a few bottles of liquor, two bottles of Moet & Chandon Champagne, snacks, and mixers. From that vantage point, we could see about half the night sky, including the sky over Patong Bay, so we could see the constellation of sky lanterns as they were being set free with the wishes and hopes of their owners. It was truly a wonderful spectacle.

From there, we hit the street with thousands of other revelers and stayed out until after 3 a.m. ringing in the new year. Truly a very fun night, and it only took me until about 6 p.m. the following day to fully recover! What can I say, I’m not as young as I used to be.

Much of the other time was spent shopping, wandering, and eating… typical holiday stuff. Sadly, though Patong is one of the most upmarket areas in Phuket, and about the most expensive place in Thailand, the food is largely uninspiring. My guide book calls the dining scene in Patong “dire,” and brands the many cafés and restaurants that dot the beach road and nearby environs as “disastrous.” For the most part, I agree with this assessment. Patong is no food-lovers’ paradise, although good food CAN be found, like this place (pictured) where you can select your own fish, “oyters,” and fresh veggies, but it’s startlingly overpriced (triple the price of similar fare in Bangkok is common). Even the more pedestrian food is much more expensive than either Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. Chalk it up to tourism, I guess, plus this is the absolute peak season in Phuket, anyway. As an example though, mouthwateringly good Pad Thai (the best I’ve ever had) is available from street vendors in Bangkok for 30 baht (about US$1); decidedly average Pad Thai usually goes for 80-120 baht in Patong (as much as 190 baht in “nice” restaurants, which is obscene). But we did manage to score some good food, and found one place on the main road, part of a place called the PS Hotel, that had dishes that were quite decent. Their tom kah gai, a chicken coconut soup that is among my favorite Thai dishes, was brilliant, if slightly expensive at 80 baht. Honestly, by US standards, none of this is remotely bank-breaking, but by the standards of the rest of Thailand, Patong is breathtakingly expensive.

On the second day of the fresh new year, three of us took a package tour to Raya Island, also known as Racha Yai. For peak season, we got what I think was a pretty good deal of 1,200 baht each (US$40) for a so-called full-day tour.. Though we were supposed to be picked up around 8 a.m., the minibus didn’t arrive until 9, and we certainly didn’t get an hour tacked on to the end of the trip; it was simply cut short, which is a bit rubbishy in my opinion. But regardless, the trip was great, and Raya Island didn’t disappoint at all. Take a look at these pictures…they haven’t been manipulated or edited (except for some cropping here and there). This is really how the place looked. The main anchorage is called Patok Bay, and it’s simply gorgeous. The water is literally crystal clear, the sand is like fine sugar, and apart from the flotilla of boats disgorging day-trippers like us, and all the people bobbing around in the bay, it’s truly like a postcard.

We all swam for an hour in the pristine waters, then got back on the boat to go to another part of the island for some snorkeling. The water there wasn’t nearly as clear, but there were loads of colorful tropical fish – butterflyfishes, tangs, wrasses, Moorish idols, and loads of green chromises and yellow tigerfish. It was great! We hung out there snorkeling for nearly an hour, enjoyed some fresh fruit, then got back on the boat to return to Patok Bay, where we walked inland about 700-800 meters for a buffet lunch that was really pretty good. We stuffed ourselves, then just the three of us wandered the northern tip of the island and found a stunning, stunning place called Siam Bay that was the total opposite of Patok Bay. This bay was much shallower, so boats have no chance of coming in, and the water appears white and pale blue for much further out, until the depth increases and gives a richer blue-green tint to the clear waters. It was completely pristine, and with nearly no one around, felt like a bit of paradise. Unfortunately, we had only about 40 minutes to enjoy Siam Bay since we weren’t given an extra hour to make up for the tour operator’s tardiness, so we had to find our way back to Patok Bay at 3 p.m. for the half-hour speedboat trip back to Ao Chalong Bay on Phuket. As you can see from the photos, it was just an amazing island… I even saw a huge sea eagle there (captive, but still most impressive). For anyone traveling to Phuket and wondering what sort of day trip to take that’s not too far from “base camp,” I definitely recommend Raya Island. The Similan Islands are even more spectacular, but are considerably further, requiring a 90-minute bus ride, followed by a 90-minute speedboat trip. This one is 20 minutes on the bus and 30 minutes on the boat – very manageable.

And that was my trip to Phuket!

The surprise upgrade to business class on Qatar Airways was brilliant... vintage Champagne, amazing lie-flat seats, total comfort. I only regret that it was such a short flight! I could have easily handled a few more hours of luxury.

Next up on the blog... spending Chinese New Year (about a month later) in Penang, another birthday (groan!), and getting the news that I'm going to have to move to a new condo!

Bahasa Melayu, Censorship, and the Delicate Art of Manglish

2010-12-10T23:41:00.019-07:00

So after over two years of living in a multicultural, multilingual society, I figure I may know somewhere between 120 and 150 words in the national language, Bahasa Melayu. It's not that it's a particularly difficult language; on the contrary, it's far simpler than languages such as Spanish, French, or English. No real verb conjugations to speak of, no tenses (perfect or otherwise), and no genders for nouns. Even the lexicon is far, far smaller than English. Really, it's just that learning the Malay language isn't functionally necessary for living here as a foreigner. Most people speak some degree of English (or attempt it on signs, as shown here), and as I've witnessed many, many times, English is routinely used between two people whose mother tongue is another language (like two Malays or two Chinese speaking to each other using only English). Still though, I try to pick up a few new words in Malay each month, but the problem is, if they're not common words, and I don't use them or see them regularly, I forget them easily.

One of the joys of living in a multilingual nation is that people here routinely slip in and out of various languages, even in the course of the same conversation. I think that's so cool... if you don't know how to express something in English, then you just switch over to Cantonese, or Malay, or whatever, then back to English, or vice-versa. It's very natural and common here... I think it's brilliant. And it's totally normal for me to be talking to a friend in English, when he'll get a phone call and rapid-fire jabber away in Mandarin, then will flip effortlessly right back to English for me. I've always thought that was amazing being able to switch between different languages like that — and there's no actual translating involved. I can sometimes do this at a very remedial level. I was driving in a steady rain once, and rounded a curve on the highway and saw a flashing sign, Awas! Terowong di hadapan! All road signs here are in Malay, and what was cool for me was that I didn't have to actually translate that in my head or sort it out into English. It just clicked into place exactly what it meant... I equated the words with the ideas and things they represented, rather than with their English-language equivalents. (In English, it's basically, "Caution! Tunnel Ahead!")

Ads and displays are oftentimes multilingual, too. The phrase of the actual ad will be in English, but all the other stuff will be in Malay. Movie posters will have all of their taglines in English, of course, but at the bottom, it will say Di pawagam 31 Dis 2010 or something ("In theaters December 31, 2010"). I wish Americans were as accepting of other languages as Malaysians are. English is happily, if not gracefully, woven into the Malaysian culture in a nation where all of its inhabitants' native languages are definitely not English (Malay, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tamil, Hakka, Hokkien, and probably a dozen indigenous dialects), and nobody really seems to mind. But when signs are posted in English and Spanish in the U.S., some Americans tend to feel threatened. I think having multiple languages in a society is great and often find myself envious of people here who speak three or four languages easily.

However, I have to say somewhat critically, the response I get from locals when I do attempt to speak to them in Malay is not usually encouraging. They usually just laugh at me or don't understand me at all and talk back to me in English. I don't think they're doing it to be rude, but it's very different from the reaction a foreigner gets in Indonesia or Thailand when making the effort to speak the native language (they are typically delighted that you're even trying), instead of just presuming like everyone should speak English, like many Americans are prone to doing when traveling abroad. So between the lack of real necessity to learn the local languages here, and the lack of encouraging response I normally get when I do attempt it, I usually just opt to converse in English.

One of the inherent problems in a country where only a conversational level of English is typically used is a lack of understanding of some of the more esoteric words and phrases in the language (like the word "esoteric," for example!). For instance, the words "already" and "never mind" are routinely and widely misused in speech here. My mechanic will tell me that "The spark plus are spoiled already, lah." "Oh okay," I'll reply, "Just go ahead and replace them." To which he'd reply, "Never mind, never mind, I replace already and call you later, lah." It's completely understandable, just slightly... off. This is not how we use these words in American English. Nor do we add "lah" to the end of sentences, but this is a quirk of Malaysian and Singaporean English.

The amalgam of English with Malay is called "Manglish" (and "Singlish" in Singapore), and it's frequently a source of confusion, frustration, and/or amusement for me. One of my favorite things is how they use double comparatives, as in, "This is much more better," or, "That one is more cheaper." I hear this so often, it's almost starting to sound normal to me. Another thing is how the Malay language incorporates other languages into its lexicon. In English, the borrowed word is usually kept intact, such as the word "rendezvous," which retains its French spelling. In Malay, however, the spelling is changed to fit the strict phonetics of the Malay language. Science becomes "sains," ice becomes "ais," bungalow becomes "banglo," and many words ending with "-tion" in English end with "-asi" in Malay (inspirasi, inovasi, transformasi, telekomunikasi). For some reason, the word wow becomes "wah," as seen in this photo, but oddly enough, the rest of the ad is in English. The line between English and local languages here is continually blurred. Sometimes it's just mixed up altogether.

This issue is brought keenly to light when watching TV. Not only are the subtitles (in Malay) only a dim approximation of the nuance and complexity of what's actually being said, the Malaysian censors will oftentimes edit out what they think are offensive words (they just drop the soundtrack briefly), while leaving in actual profanity, or censoring the same word inconsistently throughout a program. On one episode of "Family Guy," a show I can't believe is even aired in Malaysia, they censored out the word "prostate" the first 9 or 10 times it was used (in reference to a prostate exam), but left the word in there the last few times. Never mind that it's not even remotely offensive or profane... it was just wildly inconsistent. "Bitch" and "ass" were left intact, however. It was very puzzling. It's also annoying to watch a show that airs somewhat late at night (after 10 p.m.), begins with all the warnings about language, violence, mature subject matter, etc., and then is STILL censored. Then sometimes, they'll show the same program (and same episode) from early evening again after midnight, and paradoxically, the late-night version will be much more censored than the 7 p.m. version was... wow. (Sorry, I mean "wah.") Fortunately, I don't watch a great deal of TV here, but things like this always make it an adventure when I do.

Rocky Mountain High: Colorado Trip, Part 2

2010-10-19T02:40:00.020-06:00

Brace yourselves, folks, it’s another “in the sky” blog entry. Here I am in seat 11J on an Airbus A330/300, currently about 37,000 feet somewhere over the southern Gulf of Alaska in the northern Pacific. We’re well clear of US airspace, and now 4,116 miles (6,621 km) from Tokyo. Got all that??

I’ve made three trips home to Colorado in the time I’ve been living in Kuala Lumpur, and this is really the first time I’ve seriously wished I had had a few more days back home. I’ll be happy to get back to my life and my routine in Malaysia, naturally, but the two weeks I spent in the US just flew by, particularly the second week. This has been a new “exit route” for me this time… instead of flying from the dreaded Los Angeles airport, I instead flew from Denver to Salt Lake City, then flew out from there en route to Tokyo. I was seated on the wrong side of the airplane to get the really impressive shots of the Colorado Rockies as we flew west from Denver, but here’s one decent shot from the right side of the plane, showing the fresh dusting of snow on the northern mountains in my home state. By the time we crossed the Continental Divide and were descending into the state of Utah’s capital city, the views of the still-snowless Wasatch Range of the Rockies were stunning. Salt Lake City’s suburbs go right up to the edge of the mountains (on the left side of the photo), and the rise of the Wasatch Range is pretty dramatic. And here’s the city’s namesake, the Great Salt Lake, a vast body of water with salinity so high, there is little life there (certainly no fish). We actually had a pretty substantial delay once we boarded the airplane, about an hour’s wait while they sorted out some weight and balance issues with the cargo on the plane, but I’m in a window seat with nobody seated next to me, so I have no complaints!

I thought about ending the last entry with this particular photo, but decided to stick it here in this entry instead. This is me snoozing on my mother’s sofa with my 13-year-old Amazon parrot, Shiloh, hunkered down and “nesting” on my chest. I got Shiloh when she was about four years old, many years ago. Unlike most pets, however, Amazon parrots are incredibly long-lived in captivity. Many live 65-75 years, and I believe the record is a male Blue-fronted Amazon who was an amazing 114 years old when he died. Unless I live to a very ripe old age, it’s entirely possible that Shiloh may outlive me. I can truly say she doesn’t look a day older than she did when I first brought her home! Shiloh is a Red-lored Amazon, and although her species isn’t renowned for “talking,” they are particularly affectionate as far as Amazon parrots go, and Shiloh is a loving bird indeed. She does say “hello” and can imitate whistles and laughter quite easily, but that seems to be the extent of her vocalizing ability. My mom has been so good about caring for Shiloh during the time I’ve been in Malaysia, getting occasional help from her friends and neighbors, as well.

And here’s my Jeep! Woo hoo! So now, all four of my cars have made an appearance at some point on my blog. The intrepid Tiara and somewhat-new Kia Spectra back in KL, and there was one shot of my beloved Toyota MR2 Turbo in my garage in Denver on an entry from 2009. And this is my Jeep… a vehicle with an engine so large, it would literally break the bank to drive in KL. In Malaysia, road tax is calculated based on engine displacement, whereas in Colorado, it’s based on the residual taxable value of the car. Thus, new cars are expensive to license, but go down dramatically as they age (and their value decreases). So in Colorado, this Jeep runs about US$35 a year to license. Since it has a monster 5.9-liter V8 engine, however, it would cost a bomb to license in Malaysia… a completely staggering RM14,734.50 a year, or US$4,765! It’s a 1998 Grand Cherokee, so the entire value of the vehicle isn’t much more than that, anymore. Maybe if the US had a similar road tax formula, we wouldn’t have such an onslaught of huge, gas-sucking vehicles on the road. The vast majority of cars in Malaysia have engine displacements of about two liters or less, and those cars are perfectly suitable and capable. That said, though the Jeep isn’t exactly fuel efficient, it is a fantastic vehicle for taking into the Colorado mountains. It’s actually the third Grand Cherokee that I’ve owned, and each of them have reliably taken me on some of the roughest, rockiest, and most breathtaking backcountry roads imaginable. Though it’s largely senseless to own such a trail-capable, gasoline-hungry, all-wheel-drive vehicle in most places, in Colorado, it’s completely logical. I’m just glad I have a more fuel-efficient car to drive most of the time there. When I lived in Denver, the Jeep was mostly used just for hauling things and for off-road adventures in the mountains.

Back to the photography, this picture here is from Echo Lake near the base of Mount Evans, the dominant peak of Colorado’s Front Range just west of Denver. We actually got some light snow shortly after I snapped this photo. Though the sun’s angle ensured a high-contrast sky, the clouds nestled in and around the jagged terrain of the mountains really gives a sense of height and grandeur. As with most of these shots from the Rockies, it’s best to click and enlarge them if you really want to see the photo properly.

As in the photo above, one of the things I like to do at high altitudes is to use nearby trees or rocks to either “frame” the photo or to lend a sense of perspective (mostly related to the perception of height). In the two following photos, taken on the high mountain road between Evergreen and Idaho Springs, elements in the foreground are really used simply to convey the magnitude of the vast conifer forest in the background.

Back in the lower elevations, we stopped off in the westernmost suburb of Denver, a town called Golden. We went into a bar and had some draft beers and appetizers. One look at this plate of nachos, in all their disgusting, decadent, and delicious glory, and you’ll understand why so many Americans are overweight. This is the sort of rubbish we eat… I don’t do it often myself, but on occasion, it’s a lot of fun to bond with friends and family over a pitcher of beer and a plate full of future obesity. What a mess.

I’ll take a break here and watch a movie or see if I can get some rest… will pick this back up later on.

Well, the flight from Salt Lake to Tokyo didn’t crash, so apparently their weight and balance calculations were correct. We chewed up a LOT of runway on the takeoff roll, though, and the angle of attack on the climb-out was pretty shallow, too, so I’m thinking that aircraft was pushing its maximum take-off load. Anyway, that flight was uneventful, but the delay in Salt Lake meant a bit of a scramble to catch my next flight in Tokyo, as there was only about a 40-minute window. However, I made it, my luggage made it, and I had a great seat (exit row) on the seven-hour flight down to Bangkok and slept almost literally the whole flight, waking only long enough to eat about half of the lackluster dinner they served. It does seem to be pretty hit-or-miss with Delta’s food, from what I can tell. Some are quite good, some are very forgettable. None are up to the standards of Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific.

So now I’m sitting at the gate in Bangkok, awaiting the final short flight back to KL. I only flew Delta between Bangkok and Denver; the KL portion has been served by Air Asia, and I will not make that mistake again. I spent a solid hour arguing my case with them about my checked luggage. What a nightmare. I have one bag that’s about 24 kg, and another that’s 13 kg. Look at this picture! How much trouble could that one little suitcase in front possibly be? I “prebooked” my luggage for 25 and 15 kg, so I figured that would cover me. However, their site won’t allow you to put two bags on one leg, so I put the 15 kg on my outbound flight, then proceeded to e-mail them via their website TWICE from the United States regarding the luggage issue. The site clearly says that they would respond to my inquiry within five days – I didn’t get a response to either e-mail, the first of which was sent a week and a half ago. So what I learned here is that when their site says “supersize your baggage!” and offers you different weights for different prices, that weight is for all your checked luggage combined, not per piece. You’d think the site would state that pretty clearly… but it doesn’t. So because of this lack of clarity and the total non-response to my e-mails, I had no clue, and they tried to charge me 2,150 Thai Baht or something for “excess baggage,” which is a fairly huge sum for a small suitcase (it’s about US$80, I believe). So I went round and round with various people, none of whom were empowered to do anything, naturally. I was never belligerent or abusive (I actually never even raised my voice); I just kept stating my case over and over again and refusing to leave the counter. I didn’t think that their failure to do their job (responding to my inquiry) was something I should be penalized for. As I told the agent, had they responded within five days as the site said, and explained things, I never would have brought the second little suitcase. In the end, I wound up agreeing to pay about 850 Baht, which is more than I’d have cared to pay, but better than it had been. What a bloody nightmare, seriously. They also allow your carry-on bag to only weigh 7 kg, which is complete rubbish. The empty bag itself probably weighs half that, at least! Delta allows carry-on bags to weigh up to 18 kg, which is actually pretty generous (mine weighs about 14). I’ll not use Air Asia again for any final leg of a return flight from the US if there’s any chance of checking more than one bag! Consider this a lesson learned.

More later once I’m back in KL!

Okay, so I’m back and largely recovered from the flight(s). It was about 22-23 hours of actual flying time, and I reckon around 35 hours or so of total transit time. Here's a shot of all the stuff I brought back this time. Like before, it's a lot of food and things I either can't get easily in KL (or at all) or things that are much cheaper in the States. I brought back two suits this time, too, as well as a car stereo for the Kia. It was really odd returning this time… even though the time in Denver went by really quickly, I felt like I had been gone from KL for a long, long time. When I walked in my condo, it seemed almost unfamiliar to me. That’s never happened before. The sensation wore off soon enough though, and I was back to work and right back in my routine as of the next day.

So it was an enjoyable visit all in all. I got to catch up with friends and family (and my parrot), my mom’s surgery went smoothly and all the news was good, and I got to enjoy some great food and soak up some incredible weather. If the flights weren’t so very long (and costly), I’d surely go back more often! The shot here is of Bear Creek, not too far from where my mother lives… very nice area for hiking and wandering. And the final picture is from our last foray into the mountains, this scene of the Never Summer Mountain range from the Peak-to-Peak scenic highway near the small town of Nederland, Colorado. What a beautiful day that was!

More entries to come soon as we head into the final months of 2010.

Colorful Colorado

2010-10-10T08:18:00.014-06:00

Though my home state of Colorado offers scenic beauty at any time of year, autumn is by far my favorite season. The days are still mostly warm, and the evenings are cool and crisp. Last year, I visited in September, so I wrote about my love for this time of year in the Rocky Mountains then. This year, I got to fly back home to visit in early October... most of the leaves at higher elevations in the mountains have already hit their peak color (and some have fallen off the trees completely), but lower elevations are still covered with golden yellow aspens, and the trees in Denver are just starting to change colors. It's just a wonderful time of year, a few short weeks where the transition from summer to winter yields a comfortable climate with plenty of clear, blue-sky days, punctuated by the brilliant colors of the changing leaves.

It's been an enjoyable holiday... getting to visit with friends and family. My mother is recovering from major surgery now, so we've been trying to get her out and about a little more each day as she works towards her recovery. One day, we took her brother and his wife, who were visiting from Atlanta, into the foothills and along the Front Range, where I snapped many of these photos. In the afternoon, as we returned to Denver, we stopped by an open-space park in the foothills west of the city. The sun was low in the sky... that "magic hour" before sunset, so the quality of light was outstanding. The warmth of the setting sun, the long shadows and deep contrasts between shadow and light made for a very enjoyable hike along the creek. This stem of scrub oak leaves, a deep red color, was backlit by the sun and really caught my eye.

One thing about life in the mountains is that there's a real struggle for life above a certain altitude. Yet life always finds a foothold and manages to carry on. We went over Squaw Pass, just west of the city, which reaches an elevation of over 11,000 feet (3,350 meters), and trees have a hard time growing there. Yet they still find a way... here is what I thought was a nice shot of a young tree which was growing and thriving in the most inhospitable home... the side of a rocky cliff high in the mountains.

Down at lower elevations, life takes on a much more recognizable shape. Here, a mule deer buck pauses during his "fattening up" for the coming winter. People in Colorado are very accustomed to wildlife... seeing deer, elk, foxes... even in the suburbs of Denver, it's not unusual.

I'll add some more pictures and write more in a second entry later. I have a couple of full days left here in Colorado, so if the weather cooperates (there's snow in the forecast), we'll head back up into the mountains and I'll take some more pictures. This last photo was taken looking over a rocky outcrop towards a forest that, although already filled with plenty of barren trees, still shows bright yellow swaths of aspens amongst the evergreens. I'll always consider Colorado to be home... no matter how far I wander. :)

Back to Bali

2010-09-17T01:05:00.039-06:00

Get yourself a drink and a snack… this is going to be a lengthy post. It’s another entry being composed on my netbook while cruising along at 37,000 feet. I’m on board an Air Asia flight back to KL from a nice, but far too short vacation in Bali. It’s really the first true break I’ve had since starting my job back in January, although there was a brief weekend in Langkawi for Chinese New Year. This time I went with one of my friends who is now living and working in Singapore and stayed for a lightning-fast three nights. This was my ninth trip to Bali since mid-2003… it’s hard to believe, really. I think five (or maybe even six) of those trips came while I was living in the States, and the balance have occurred since moving to Malaysia. So here we go... and remember, any of these pics can be enlarged by clicking on them (and some definitely should be).

It’s a short flight from KL down to Bali, a little under three hours. Here’s me on the tarmac at KL’s airport, about to board the morning flight. Woo hoo! When we arrived at Ngurah Rai airport in Bali, I got a bit of a nasty surprise. When I first started visiting Indonesia, the visa for Americans (or anyone) was free and valid for 60 days. In 2004, however, someone in the Indonesian government had the epiphany that a lot of money could be made by charging all these sucker tourists. Never mind that Bali was barely more than two years removed from the October 2002 bombing that completely decimated the entire tourism industry there. The Balinese shrieked in protest, but the Indonesian government still implemented a charge for the visa on arrival for nearly every country from which it drew its tourists… US$10 for a seven-day visa, $25 for a 30-day visa, which was now the maximum stay allowed. Since moving to KL, it’s no longer necessary to stay in Bali for two weeks to justify the flight (that was about a 25-hour sojourn from Denver), so I could just pay $10 and get a week-long visa and be fine. Well, not anymore! In the year since my last visit, they’ve scrapped that nicety altogether. Now, whether you stay one day or a month, the visa is $25, thank you very much. Greed is alive and well in Indonesia. Coupled with the outrageous departure tax that is actually 50% higher in Bali than in other places such as Yogyakarta, a family of four will see a whopping US$160 in entry/exit fees added to the cost of their holiday. My question remains: Where the hell is all this money going? It’s got to amount to a HUGE sum of cash given the sheer hordes of visitors descending on Bali (and other places in Indonesia, although over 80% of visitors to that country go to Bali and Bali alone). I can report quite frankly that, apart from now having a few jetways for passengers to use, that money is not going to markedly improve Ngurah Rai airport.

So anyway, I was bitter over the more than doubling of the visa fee for about two minutes, then got over it. Happily, in exchange for paying 150% more, at least they did away with the bloody full-page visa stickers they have vandalized my poor passport with for the last five years. On a page that can normally accommodate at least two entries and exits (four stamps), and usually three of each, Indonesia plastered a giant sticker, then stamped it. This was a persistent source of irritation for me every time I visited. Passports in America are not cheap at all, and I don’t need the very limited number of pages in mine consumed by stickers that cut the number of uses in half. One time, an Indonesian immigration officer in Jakarta put the giant sticker in my passport, then proceeded to stamp the opposite page (instead of stamping the space on the sticker as he should have), screwing up two pages instead of one. I was not amused. So yeah, apparently enough people fussed about it that they finally did away with the whole sticker program altogether and went back to a plain old stamp, like every other country in the world. So that’s great. I don’t see that $25 visa fee ever disappearing, though.

Since that horrible bombing in 2002, and the far-less horrible one in 2005, Bali visitor numbers have rebounded spectacularly. In fact, I think in many ways, Bali is a victim of its own success. There was just a crush of traffic in and around Kuta, which at times was just laughable. The tiny little roads and alleys were never, ever meant to accommodate anything close to the onslaught that’s unleashed on them regularly now. As Bali’s popularity has grown, so too have their prices, coupled with general inflation and cost-of-living increases. Tourists still seem to gladly fork over the cash for the higher prices, and so Bali’s wealth relative to the rest of Indonesia is substantial. So this draws quasi-immigrants for a share of the tourist cash – not really immigrants of course, since they’re still Indonesians, but they’re not Balinese. They mostly come from neighboring Java, itself the most populated island on Earth, and also from Sumatra and Sulawesi. I’ve even met workers in Bali who came from Kalimantan (on the island of Borneo) and East Timor. The allure of relatively easy money is very strong and the Javanese, in particular, have long cast a jealous eye towards their far more popular and wealthy neighbor to the east. So Bali, though a very small island in the grand scheme of things, has a population of some four million, perhaps more. And at times, it seems they’re all packed into the sprawling, congested Kuta-Legian-Seminyak conurbation.

Another thing the flow of money and rise in wealth has done is enabled many, many more locals to buy cars and motorbikes. A few days in South Bali and you might be tempted to think that every motorbike ever made is there. Of course, I’m not an idle observer to all this madness. An oft-misquoted portion of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that “the measurement of position necessarily disturbs a particle’s momentum,” and this has been expanded to imply that you can never be a completely neutral, non-impacting observer to any phenomenon. Your mere presence alters the equation, however minutely. And so it is with my presence in Bali. Though I observe these growing issues, as a tourist, I bring my money, I rent motorbikes, keenly aware that I’m a small contributor to the very problems that are diminishing the appeal of Bali for me.

The saving grace of all this madness has, in the past, been found in Ubud. Once a completely unremarkable inland village, tourism and Western expats such as Walter Spies, over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, have transformed Ubud into Bali’s cultural heartland. I would get my fill of sun, sand, and general hedonistic abandon in South Bali, then beat a wearied retreat to the lush green valleys and ridges of Ubud, which provided an altogether different experience from that of Kuta.

This time, however, proved to be just more of the same. We took the motorbike up to Ubud, usually an hour-long journey. (Here's a shot of the bike on a relatively quiet stretch of roadway.) But we stopped in Denpasar to shop, then stopped at a wonderful roadside warung (food stall) to enjoy a distinctly Balinese lunch, something called babi guling. An oasis of Balinese Hinduism in a vast archipelago dominated by Islam (Indonesia, though a secular state, has the largest Muslim population in the world), Bali is the place for pork-lovers to go. Babi is pork (and pig) in the Indonesian language, and this dish comprises all manner of meats and treats from a slow-roasted suckling pig. You get it all… the meat itself, juicy and tender, the crispy fried skin (known to Southern Americans as pork rinds), sausages, pork satay, fried slices of liver, something red and fried whose origin I probably don’t want to know, but it was yummy, a piece of the smoked and roasted skin with a bit of juicy meat attached (which scraped right off), and a pork-rich clear soup. It’s all served with rice and veggies, and we washed it down with iced tea, and this was all still a veritable bargain at Rp. 25,000 (less than US$3). It was absolutely delicious… the first time I’ve had babi guling in probably four years.

So owing to the leisurely ride north, we didn’t arrive in Ubud until shortly after 3 p.m. and it was a complete nightmare. The traffic was completely appalling and it’s only because we were on a motorbike instead of in a car that we ever reached our destination at all. As we later learned, that’s the worst time to try driving in or around Ubud as numerous tourist buses arrive from the south and disgorge hundreds of people into the town. So the dozens of buses blend with the regular traffic and turn it all into the seventh circle of hell. I was completely gobsmacked, really. I mean, I expect it in Kuta, but I had never seen this sort of jam in Ubud before. However, we got to my favorite hiking spot at Campuhan Ridge (chomp-OOH-ahn), seducing as always with its many shades of green and fantastic views of the steep valleys cut on either side by rushing rivers. We spent awhile hiking, and then went to an art gallery, one of many in and around Ubud, which turned out to be an interesting experience.

This particular gallery is run by an old-ish American lout who has been in Bali since the late 70s. We spent a few minutes talking with him and I wish I could say it was an engaging and enlightening conversation, but ten minutes into things, I got a very clear picture of who he was. Spouting off near-racist commentary and getting virtually everything he said about Malaysia dead wrong, he embodied that nasty expat character I’ve heard about and read about but have taken great pains to avoid. He lives a life of unimaginable wealth and comfort compared to most of the people around him, but is barely able to conceal his contempt for them. Fat, miserably belligerent, and ignorant, he was like an even less-likeable version of Archie Bunker. You know the type. The people who don’t know anything, but have somehow managed to not only be oblivious to their blatant ignorance, but to actually wear it like a badge of honor. You can’t tell them anything, so don’t even try. So this piece of work started babbling about the “MAY-lays” and how everyone in the whole region is fundamentally a “MAY-lay” (that’s how he pronounced Malay, not “muh-LAY,” as is correct). Now, the Indonesian race is definitely descended from Malays, but he was carrying on about even Chinese Malaysians and Chinese Singaporeans still being Malay (they are completely not). Then he launched into some absurd diatribe about how the Chinese control the Malays and “keep them Muslim” because then they can’t drink because once a Malay (“MAY-lay”) gets hold of alcohol, you can’t control them. My god. I’m not sure where he went with that idea, because at that point, I had just tuned out and concentrated fully on not rolling my eyes completely out of my head. So I waited until he took a raspy breath, redirected the conversation for about fifteen seconds, then politely bid him good day.

So a word about the accommodations this time. In past trips, I’ve always stayed either in luxury resorts, small hotels, or family-run bed-and-breakfasts. On my second trip to Bali, I stayed in a place that called itself a villa, but it was really just a fancy hotel in a different package. A true private villa is essentially like staying in a home, complete with everything you’d expect in a home. And that’s where we stayed this time… a lovely private villa in the village of Kerobokan Kelod, about 10 minutes north of the energy and bustle of Seminyak, and about 20 minutes from the general chaos of Kuta and Legian. Though staffed, we were largely on our own, with a stocked refrigerator operated on the honor system (take a beer, mark it down). There was also a larger fridge for guests to stock with anything they wanted. A small, but really nice (and deep) swimming pool was in the back garden, complete with a Jacuzzi and steam room. Of course, the foliage was just gorgeous, typical Bali. We had access to a good-sized library of books, music, and DVDs, and plenty of relaxation and privacy – the whole villa can only sleep 8 people and even that would be a stretch. It was expensive by Bali standards, about US$80 per night, but by American standards and certainly by Singaporean standards, where a basic 3-star hotel room can go for over US$200 per night, it was still good value for money. I definitely like the private villa experience. The bathroom was huge, too! I could only get about a quarter of it into this picture. It really was a nice place. I rented the motorbike in the photo above for about Rp. 35,000 per day and we were set. As challenging as navigating the roads of Bali can be, particularly the minor village roads, and especially at night, I was actually really proud that I never got us lost, or worse, killed. I’ve written on here before about the risks and travails of riding a motorbike in Bali, and I’m always fastidiously careful.

As ever, the food was a memorable part of the trip. Really, good food adds so much to any enjoyable vacation, doesn’t it? Continuing the “mmm… pork” theme, we had bacon every morning with our excellent breakfast spreads. Take a look at this! It was really a much better breakfast than I expected… a full complement of eggs, toast, cheese, butter and jam, bacon, orange juice, coffee, and three types of fresh fruit. Great way to start the day, even if we only once did it before 10 a.m. Ha ha … hey, it’s a vacation, right?

Another near-ritual I’ve grown to love is having bakso and Bintang on the beach at Kuta while awaiting the sunset. The former is a meatball noodle soup, the latter, a local pilsner beer. Once upon a time, the combo would cost only Rp. 15,000 (ten for the beer, five for the bakso). These days, it’s more like Rp. 27,000. But the beer is still ice cold and the bakso is as good as ever. The atmosphere on the expansive stretch of sand is so enjoyable... everyone is just relaxing and having a good time. It's the embodiment of the spirit of a vacation. Cheers!

I’ve written previously about the outstanding pizzas served up out of the scorching hot, wood-fired oven at Chasers, on Jalan Benesari in Legian. Here’s a picture to prove it. Once again, “porkapalooza” continued… ham, salami, pepperoni… YUM. Now, toppings and cheese matter a lot on a pizza, and of course the sauce plays a prominent role, but the crust is definitely the most important part of a pizza, and the crusts of Chasers’ pizzas are brilliant, cooked to crisp perfection on the stone floor of the oven. If I’m being totally truthful, this place may turn out the best pizzas I’ve had outside of America… and that includes my trip to Italy. Though they’ve naturally raised their prices over the years, it’s still a great value at Rp. 34,000 (just under US$4) for any pizza or pasta dish on the menu. If you’re in Bali and craving a good pizza, I recommend this place. Just go during a busy time of the day, so the fire in the oven is being continually stoked and kept blazing hot. That searing hot stone is the key to the perfect crust. Wow… now I’m hungry. Ha ha.

I’m not much of a flower aficionado in general, but put a camera in my hand and I’m drawn to the colors and shapes of flowers almost as much as I am to waterfalls and lakes. My two favorite flowers are the blue columbine, which is the state flower of my home state of Colorado, and the frangipani, which actually grows from the branch tips of a very weird-looking tree that usually looks half-dead since its branches and limbs are largely barren. Oddly enough, and I don’t really know what the reason for this is, many cultures in Southeast Asia associate the frangipani with death, funerals, graveyards, and in the case of Malay culture, vampires. Some folklore holds that the trees provide hiding places for ghosts and demons. (The sap of the tree is poisonous, but poses no harm to humans apart from being a skin irritant.) In Bali, the flowers are routinely used for temple offerings. Frangipani flowers are just amazing. They’re incredibly aromatic, particularly at night, and the scent is truly beguiling. They come in numerous colors, are usually perfectly formed, even in their bud state, and with their five-petal spiral arrangement, possess a wonderful symmetry. Once they fall from their tree, they still retain their shape and powerful fragrance. If you drop the fallen flowers into a basin of water, they will float perfectly and will stay vibrant for many days. This shot of the still-growing yellow frangipani flowers was snapped from the balcony of our villa. This other one? I don’t know what it is, looks sort of like something in the lily family, but it sure caught my eye. This is definitely a nice pic to enlarge (as is the frangipani pic).

In pursuit of some real relaxation despite the short holiday, I vowed to do two things. One was to find a book (I knew ahead of time about the villa’s library) and read it. The whole thing. The second was to get a long massage. I succeeded on both counts… not only did I read a really good novel, getting completely absorbed in the myriad characters and arc of the story, complete with plot twists and a dénouement that wasn’t revealed until the final page of the book, but I also got TWO lengthy massages, the first a 90-minute affair, pretty straightforward, and the second, a full two-hour Javanese mandi lulur. This treatment combines a 90-minute body massage with an exfoliating green tea scrub and a cucumber-yogurt body mask treatment, followed by a soak in a scented bath and a serving of ginger tea and biscuits. It’s a staple of Indonesian massage, and it’s money very, very well spent, I promise. (It’s also a complete bargain by US standards at about $20 for two hours; and even by Malaysian standards, pretty cheap as well… less than RM65, which will get you a basic one-hour traditional massage in KL.) I could easily go for one of these treatments on a monthly basis… very therapeutic and de-stressing!

More later… we’re descending for the approach to KL.

Back at home now and fully unpacked, a day later. In retrospect, this was a good trip, just a bit too short. Two or three more nights would have been great. Despite all the minor irritants with South Bali’s growing congestion, the island itself is still enchanting. One just has to look a little more closely now, and endeavor to push beyond all the tourist trappings. The rich culture, the warm and friendly people, and the amazing food are all still very much present. I’ll conclude with a few more photos…

This is a shot from Kuta Beach one evening at sunset. Though not the quintessential electric orange sunset that Kuta is famous for, the deep blue tones made for what I thought was an evocative photo.

This is a photo of the detail of one of the stone carvings at a temple we visited near the village of Kedewatan. I have no idea of its age, but it seemed pretty old to me. This next shot is a wider view of one of the temple structures. The level of craftsmanship in the wood and stone carvings I see in Bali (particularly the things not specifically produced for the tourist trade) continues to amaze me.

One of the things I most like about Bali is that, for the self-initiated, the island can give you almost any sort of vacation you want (outside of snow skiing). If you want a rich, cultural experience, one where you can learn the language, cooking skills, art, or music, you can have that. If you want an adventure holiday, filled with parasailing, diving, and river rafting (and even bungee jumping), Bali offers that, too. If you want a laid-back "fly and flop" vacation, doing little but relaxing on the beach, well of course, that's no problem at all. Though the island is suffering from both general overpopulation and certainly a glut of tourists and tourist-related trade, it still retains its inimitable charm. While certainly not as fresh and new to me as it was in my first few visits, Bali is still a great vacation spot and there's still plenty to explore there.

The Two-Year Mark!

2010-09-06T08:53:00.016-06:00

Mmmm... chicken rice, one of my favorite local dishes. I can't believe it... two years in Malaysia. It's gone by so quickly in many ways. I arrived here on September 5, 2008. Everything was different and exciting and new. And now I've lived here for two full years -- learning the culture, eating the food, meeting the people. I feel that, for the most part, I've done what I set out to do. I think that if jobs were plentiful back in Colorado, I might be at least considering a return home. But in reality, it doesn't make much sense to move back and be unemployed.

My job here keeps me busy, probably almost too much so. About three weeks ago, I got to go down to Singapore to host a VIP event at our office and executive lounge there. Honestly, for those unfamiliar with fine wines, this sort of thing wouldn't make much of an impact. However, for people who know wine, and know the very best wines, telling them that I got to drink all five of the legendary wines from the First Growth estates of Bordeaux evokes a sense of envy and wonder. These five wines are regularly among the most expensive and highly sought-after wines in the world. As I told my guests that night, even getting to pop the cork on any one of these wines would be a treat. To have the opportunity to drink all five in the same night is an event of singular rarity, something that for many on hand that night, would indeed be a once-in-a-lifetime

chance. Here's a snapshot of me before opening the bottles... from left to right, Château Haut-Brion, Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Margaux, Château Mouton Rothschild, and Château Latour.

That's the wondrous thing about life, isn't it? We never really know what's just around the next corner. As recently as four years ago, I'd never have even dreamed that I'd be living in a foreign country, and even after arriving here, the prospect of being in senior management for an international investment company in Asia, serving up the finest wines in the world to our happy Singaporean clients never would have even entered my wildest dreams. That's not to say the job is a great dream — most of the time, it's a true job. Frustrating, tiring, overly demanding. You know... work. But this great journey, this life I feel so fortunate to lead, always surprises me with fascinating twists and turns. Not all of them enjoyable... not by a long shot. But if everything was always terrific, we wouldn't even know the difference. The rough patches just serve to make

the good times that much more enjoyable. And without this attitude, and this weird sense of adventure, I'm sure I'd never have discovered "Chad Potatoes." Of course I have no idea what they are (they look like plain ol' standard potatoes to me), but they're all mine!!

Next up for me, a return trip to Bali with friends. It's my ninth time to the tiny "island of the gods" since my inaugural trip there in June 2003, perhaps the catalyst for the tiny bit of wanderlust that brought me to live, if only for awhile, here on the Malaysian peninsula of Southeast Asia. Where else would I find such deranged flavors of Pringles?? In addition to these, I've also seen "grilled shrimp" and "seaweed." So it's not just pizzas they're messing up, it's good ol' American junk food, too. Is nothing sacred??

Shortly after the Bali trip, I'll be flying back home for two weeks to enjoy the spectacular Colorado autumn and to tend to my mother, who will be recovering from major surgery by that time. She'll be having a mass near her pancreas removed, so I'm not sure if that will help remedy her issues with staying balanced and upright, and it'll almost certainly not do anything to help her complete lack of proficiency with anything involving technology, but it'll be a good thing nonetheless. With any luck, she'll be in full recovery mode by then, and with even more luck, my baseball team will be in the playoffs and we can catch a game.

The journey continues ever onward... stay tuned!

Retiring the Tiara and a Return to FRIM

2010-08-30T07:04:00.018-06:00

Oh, crappy little gray Proton Tiara, with your tiny little wheels, your sad excuse for an engine, and your single windshield wiper... you served me well. Everyone who's kept up with this blog has read about your exploits, and while there were a couple of pretty major incidents, the reality is, for a 3,000-ringgit car (less than US$1,000) you performed pretty admirably for nearly two years... fun to drive, easy to park, and only marginally humiliating to be seen in. I can't even really gauge how much driving I did in the Tiara because the speedometer didn't work all the time, so when it wasn't functioning, the odometer wasn't accumulating kilometers either. And there was an engine swap last year, too... but the car itself has a lot of mileage. (Yes, even though it's kilometers, it's still referred to as mileage, proving yet again that the metric system sucks.) The fuel gauge never worked either, so I just had to wait until the low fuel light came on, then I'd go put RM50 worth of gas (I just can't call it "petrol") in the tank and that would hold me for 2-3 weeks. So really, the only thing on the whole dash that worked reliably was the clock, and it was very accurate.

For the better part of three months, I shopped around somewhat casually for a car. I even looked at a used BMW 523i, and although it was very nice, it had no amenities at all! No automatic climate control, no power seats, no steering wheel controls, no power mirrors, no cruise control... honestly! What's the point of buying a luxury car with no luxuries!? I also considered the 2002-2004 Nissan Sentra and even looked at some local-made cars. In the end, though, I kept going back to the most-recent generation of the Kia Spectra (roughly 2001-2005, I think). Now, I have to say here that the whole "secondhand" oeuvre is viewed very differently in Malaysia than in the United States. Most Americans not only don't mind buying things used, they will actually brag about it when they get a good deal. In Malaysia, though, there's a bit of a stigma about buying anything used... like you're buying someone's castoffs (you are) or unwanted items (also correct). But hey, it's a different culture, and I'm fine with that. For my part, I have no issue whatsoever buying things secondhand. And with the recent release of Kia's newest model, the Forte, the Spectra—as a non-current model—took a major hit in market value. Good timing for me.

I've found that one of the best approaches to car shopping is to not actually need the car. That way, you can be choosier, more methodical, really take your time. I have bought a car before in a semi-desperate state and it wasn't pretty. So since I already had the trusty, if somewhat crappy, Tiara, I wasn't in a ferocious, need-frenzied hurry to buy anything else. For me, it meant about three months of fine-tuning what I wanted and looking at several cars before finding the right one. I knew I wanted the Kia Spectra, but it had to have the factory bodykit and spoiler—just looks like a totally different car without them. I also wanted full leather seats, black was my preferred choice for the car color, I had a specific preference for the wheel style, and after looking at a few cars, I mentally noted a few other minor things, too, like, "It would be nice if the gasket around the rear window wasn't completely rotted away like it was on those last two cars."

So one fine day (except not really, more on that soon), I drove out to Klang, about 30 minutes west of KL, very near the west coast, to look at a 2002 Kia Spectra. And just as I was driving up to the car dealership, it started pouring. So much for the fine day part. Rainy weather for car shopping is not ideal, but is certainly part of the package deal for living here. Indeed, this was now three times out of four where rain had marked my car shopping ventures. The one remaining time, on a sojourn to Kajang, also 30 minutes away, it was so scorching hot, I would have welcomed the rain, truly. Anyway, so fortunately, this dealer in Klang had a massive covered parking area, so they just drove the car under there, and in the midst of the storm, I checked it all out. It not only ticked all of my "required" boxes, it hit the "preferred" ones, too. Low mileage. Single owner—an older Malay woman (this is key here, because young male drivers in Malaysia are complete lunatics behind the wheel more often than not). Extremely good condition, inside and out. New black metallic paint. New GoodYear Eagle tires. Even had the factory-original Kia-branded floormats. Everything worked except the remote fuel door release, which would only be an issue if I ever needed to put fuel in the car, so the dealer went on ahead and fixed that. So kind. I gave them a small deposit, then went back the following week to re-inspect the car and take it on a proper test drive. Marvelous, so we negotiated a final price, a mere RM17,500 (scandalously cheap in a land where a new Honda Civic costs over RM100K), and they said it would be ready by the next week. (Cars here have to be inspected upon ownership transfer, and they wanted to detail it, get the insurance policy written, etc.)

Fast forward to the following week. I had planned on taking the train to Klang on Saturday to pick up the car and drive it home. The idea was that I would take cash to the bank here and get a cashier's check for the balance due on the car. However, due to my foreign-ness, the bank was unwilling to do this for me. (I've actually since learned that they're unwilling to do pretty much anything you would normally expect a bank to do, but that's a different rant. Curse you, CIMB bank!) So the dealer said that they could deliver the car to me on Friday instead, at my offices at Midvalley and we could just deposit the cash directly into the dealer's account (at a different bank). Cool. So that's how we worked it out, and on June 18th, I took delivery of my non-Tiara. My beloved neighborhood mechanics inspected it and couldn't believe it was a secondhand car at all.

So far, the Spectra has proven to be a good car, although I will say that I generally hate parking it when it involves backing up. Reversing is hard in the Spectra because it has poor rearward visibility and a fairly lame turn radius (i.e., you can't make super tight turns). Coupled with its larger size relative to the scrappy, crappy little Tiara, and it's made for some interesting parking moments. Nothing traumatic, though. I have to confess that, though the Spectra is unquestionably nicer to drive, the Tiara was more fun: it's small, nimble, stick-shift manual transmission, and since it was such a dismal piece of rubbish, I didn't really care about it being dirty or questionably parked. With the Kia, though—yikes. It's gorgeous, black, and shiny. Totally different kettle of fish with this one... now, it's no expensive, fancy car, but it definitely looks better when it's clean and shiny. With the Tiara, clean or dirty, it honestly didn't matter.

And that's the new car story. I now have four cars scattered across the world, which is a bit ridiculous, really. So I plan to sell the Tiara, and likely one of my vehicles back in the States, too, since it seems apparent that I'll be hanging out in Malaysia for a bit longer, at least. Feel free to enlarge that last pic of the car (or any of them). Not bad for an eight-year old used Kia, eh? I've since had the windows lightly tinted, which makes it all look even better. I also have a guy who comes to my condo's carpark and washes cars now taking care of mine. He does a great job, the car stays clean (always a challenge for a black car), and it's only RM40 per month for three car washes per week. Hard to complain about that price.

So right around the same time I was homing in on a car to buy, one of my friends came up from Singapore and visited, so we took a half day and spent it at the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia ("FRIM") and did some jungle trekking and, naturally, the canopy walk. It was every bit as enjoyable as the last time, maybe even more so because we didn't get pathetically lost in the jungle afterwards like my friends and I did last time. I didn't get attacked by a rogue leech like the last time, either. Not getting lost or eaten by leeches are always signs that you're having a pretty good day, I think.

Not much to show here since the jungle still looks roughly the same, but it really is always so cool to be on that suspended rope bridge up so high, looking down on the canopy and several levels of rainforest. It's never that hot at FRIM because of the cover of the jungle, but it's absolutely humid. Even walking through the jungle, nothing terribly strenuous, takes a lot out of you with the weather the way it is. So we got most of our trekking done before 1 p.m., finished up with the canopy walk by around 2 p.m., then headed off for a late lunch. FRIM is definitely a great way to spend a day in KL... highly recommended.

Coming soon, a recap of a really unique work-related event in Singapore plus some reflections on two years of life in Malaysia (as of September 5th). Also on the radar, I really want to go over to the east coast since I've not been there yet. I am planning to do a weekend getaway to Cherating Beach, which is supposed to be quite nice, about a three-hour drive from KL. And there's another trip to Bali coming up in about a week and a half. I'll be meeting friends from two other countries there this time, so although it won't be a long holiday (four days only), it should still be a good time, truly my first real break from work since I started in January.

What is a coffee license and why doesn't Malaysia have flat sheets?

2010-08-17T18:58:00.006-06:00

So the other night, I was hanging out at home watching a rerun of "Glee" and there was this scene where everyone was attending a football game (that's American football) and arrived all bundled up in their fall apparel -- jackets, scarves, and such. And there was, for me, this wave of despair that departed as quickly as it arrived... I miss the changing seasons. Now, I can truly say I don't miss the cold. I don't miss being cold. I don't miss driving in snow. I certainly don't miss shoveling it. But having different seasons -- I think I do miss that.

The next day, I was relaying this, along with some other trifling thing about life in the US, to one of my friends, who responded, "Sounds like you're getting kind of tired of Malaysia." I took this to heart and really mulled it over. While it's true that, after 22 months here, the newness and novelty of life in KL has sort of worn off, I don't know that I'd honestly say that I'm tired of living here. When I was packing up all my stuff back in Denver, one of my primary stated reasons for moving abroad was to experience living life in a different country, out of my comfort zone... that means the good and the bad. And I do have to remind myself of that when I'm confronted with the different (and sometimes backwards) way that things are done here.

Perfect example was just this last week. My office towers are part of a massive mixed-use development here called Mid Valley City. There are two malls (one of them positively huge), two high-rise hotels, eleven high-rise residences and office towers, and no useful public transit to speak of. The LRT station is across a patch of land and a river. The station is literally in the middle of nowhere. Even though they have their very own flashy website complete with animation and funky theme music, there's no denying that Midvalley is really just a hot mess and, before getting a job with a company whose office was there, I actually made it a point to stay away from the whole area. You'll note that the website doesn't show any photos of the massive traffic jams that terrorize the place for half the day, every day, or the sad video feed of someone trying for an hour to find a parking place at 2:30 in the afternoon. (This happened to one of my colleagues, and we've had clients just give up and leave after spending 30-60 minutes fruitlessly searching for a place to park.) Mid Valley really is a victim of its own success.

So anyway, this place has about 11,000 parking spaces in the multiple parking garages, but for some demented reason, the management there decided to have a major fire drill at exactly 9 a.m. on Tuesday. Now this is the time that about 90% of everyone arrives at work, and with them closing the parking areas off for 45 minutes for their fire drill, you can imagine the effects. Why on earth have a fire drill at that time? It's deranged. Obviously you're not working on any evacuation procedures since the offices aren't filled and the malls aren't even open. If you want it like that, then do the drill at 7 a.m., not right when everyone is arriving. The traffic was backed up horribly -- all out onto the highways feeding into the ring road around the malls. This is just par for the course for Malaysia, though. With some things, I just attribute it to being different -- not necessarily better or worse. This, however, was just stupid. The ring road around Midvalley clearly, CLEARLY doesn't work in general -- it may have been a good plan in theory, but for whatever reason, it wasn't executed properly and the traffic there is awful at almost any time -- it can, at times, take me longer just to get clear of the ring road when I leave work than it does to actually drive home once I've cleared it. But I can assure everyone nothing will be done about this. There will be no traffic flow analysis, there will be no restructuring of the side roads and access paths, there will be no improvement in the mess that is Midvalley. I've been told that the philosophy here is "tolerate or avoid." And that definitely does seem to be true.

Other things are far less irritating and usually fall more under the "hmm, well that's odd" category. For example, motorbikes are everywhere here (thought not nearly as prolific as they are in Indonesia). That in itself is not very strange, but the riders here have a very strange habit of wearing their jackets backwards (back to front). I figure there's some reason for it, but it sure is bizarre.
Now take a look at these two photos. This is another strange thing here. This entire elevated roadway that you see is nothing but a giant, lame U-turn. That's it. Millions were spent constructing this thing -- it has full ramps, pillars, signage, light posts... everything but its own line of perfume. And it serves absolutely NO purpose except being a U-turn on a road. I've seen several of these throughout the city. This really highlights how poorly the road system is planned and executed.

Now, the roads themselves are bad enough, but I think after all the driving I've done here, I've landed on one of the key problems: Traffic control. For whatever reason, many traffic lights here just go on forever. The light will stay red for literally 3-4 minutes at many interchanges, then when it turns green, it's just as long. So during its long red cycle, a huge amount of traffic backs up (oftentimes spilling onto adjacent streets), and when it turns green and stays green for so long, this mechanism that's actually designed to control traffic flow just allows a torrent of vehicles onto a road that really isn't able to handle the capacity. So just timing the lights so there's a much shorter green/red cycle would be immensely helpful.

So for all the traffic problems, the one big x-factor is the drivers in KL. I was with a friend of mine some time ago and just ranting about the idiocy of people driving here -- I mean, it's awful. They don't use signals, they drift in and out of lanes, sometimes they'll just straddle a lane divider for awhile, then drift back into a proper lane, they jump the queues of cars at every opportunity, you see guys on motorbikes texting on their phones (on motorbikes!!)... it's just a mad free-for-all much of the time. And my comment was along the lines of, "Do these people just get their driver's licences out of gumball machines!?!" And the reply I got was something about coffee licenses... so I had to get more information. And after talking to no fewer than four people here, all of whom knew exactly what this referred to, here's what I came up with: In Malaysia, any license that would normally need to be acquired through a strict set of controlled processes, or passing a test, or demonstrating a degree of competency, can be otherwise obtained with an "under the table" payment. Apparently at one point, the going price was a nice cup of coffee, but nowadays the price for not having to bother with all the headache of an actual road test to get one's license is in the RM100-200 range. No wonder so many people here can't drive worth a flip!! They just pay off the examiner, get their "provisional license" sticker for their car, and off they go, thrown into the deep end where they learn by trial and error, duplicating the ways and means of the many other awful drivers here.

Now, for the Malaysians here who have actually learned to drive and done things properly and passed their written and road tests, I salute you. I would like to even believe that this is the case with a majority of drivers here. A whole lot of time spent on the roadways of Malaysia, however, suggests otherwise. (Honest disclosure: Road tests in the US aren't something you can bribe your way out of, but the test is laughably easy in most states. A ten-minute drive, maybe some parking maneuvers, and you're good to go. European countries are much more stringent with the issuance of driver's licenses.)

On a lighter note, one of the earliest things I noticed about living here was the lack of a flat, or top, sheet on the beds. The standard bed here is dressed with a fitted sheet, then a comforter. There's also a bolster pillow, which is not part of the normal bed in America. I really enjoy the bolster pillow part, and the lack of a flat sheet doesn't bother me, but it is confusing. In a hot climate such as Malaysia's, just sleeping under a thin, flat sheet would be great. I could just use the fan in my bedroom. As it is now, though, if I want to sleep under something, it has to be my comforter, so I wind up needing to set the air conditioner at 23°C. It's baffling. So the standard "bed in a bag" set here consists of one fitted sheet, one comforter, two pillow shams, occasionally (but not typically) two regular pillowcases, and one bolster pillowcase.

There's also the matter of the beds here being smaller than those in the US, but that's not surprising. Most people here are smaller. However, my particular bed here, which is supposedly a queen size bed, is exactly 75 inches long. I measured a friend's queen size bed, and it was 78 inches long, which is standard in the UK (in the US, standard queen beds are 80" long). So why is my bed only 75 inches? Where did my extra three inches go?? I'm 183cm/72 inches tall, so on the 75-inch bed, so my toes hang off the end a little (since my head isn't all the way up at the very edge of the bed). Losing those three inches makes a real difference. Weird.

Here's one difference I really like, and readers in America will wonder why it's not done there, too: You can select your seats at the movie theater when you buy your tickets, even a couple of days in advance. No more queuing up for three hours on opening night so you can even have a shot at getting a decent seat. Indonesian theaters have "assigned seat" cinemas , too. Not sure why the US doesn't adopt such a system.

Anyway, apologies for not only the epic lag time between this entry and the last one, but also for the general lack of photos here. I just wanted to get an entry posted because there's a lot more to write about and those entries WILL have photos, and will be a bit more positive in tone, I'm sure!

It's Just Not Right

2010-06-16T09:00:00.006-06:00

You know, I'm all about embracing cultural diversity and even fine with adapting things to fit the local scene. I've learned to live with, if not actually embrace, chicken ham and beef pepperoni. But there is a line beyond which it all just descends into abject lunacy.

Look at this thing. It's somehow called a pizza, and indeed, even served by the Malaysian version of Pizza Hut. But really... at what point do you just dispense with the traditional, familiar nomenclature and make up a new name for your creation? Just because it's flat and round doesn't mean it's a pizza.

I saw a commercial for this "Fish-Prawn King Pizza" on TV the other night and felt like I had slipped into an alternate reality. I've seen some pretty weird things offered up by the local Pizza Huts around here, but this one surely soars to the top of the list.

This culinary horror is made of tempura-fried shrimp, fried fish sticks, pineapple, and I guess there may or may not be some cheese used. Oh... yes, it specifies mozzarella cheese. Add some red bell peppers and some fake "crab sticks," lather them all up in a lime-mayonnaise dressing, and pile them on a crust and bake. Then garnish with lemons. The mind just boggles. And the stomach just heaves. Honestly, you can see why I don't go to Pizza Hut here, even though, as the ad insists, it's "SO WORTH IT!" At least it's an equal-opportunity offender, I guess. This faux pizza, in one go, manages to eviscerate the noble culinary efforts of, at a minimum, Italy, Japan, and Hawaii.

The ad is unintentionally funny, too... "Now you can get all the succulent prawns you want!" it proclaims. So, I guess before this promotion hit the market, there were succulent prawn limits. However, it goes on to say that the pizza comes with a whopping grand total of precisely four (4) of the aforementioned succulent prawns. And that's only if you buy the large. So, provided you're able to count higher than four, you really can't get all the succulent prawns you want, after all. Unless you just buy lots of these Fish Stick Shrimp and Pineapple Pizza Discs which you know look nothing in actual fact like they do in the photo, which somehow manages to make it look very nearly appealing. The wonders of commercial food photography.

In all fairness, this gastronomic explosion may actually taste okay... although I certainly wouldn't bet any money on it. And looking at some of the things American pizzerias have churned out definitely shows that this sort of experimentation isn't unique to Malaysia (witness the BBQ cheeseburger pizza and the taco pizza). This one, though -- I don't know. Is it the lime-mayonnaise dressing? Is it the humble fish stick being deified as if it's some culinary marvel? ("Specially-imported Alaskan pollock fish fingers!" -- It's a cheap frozen fish stick!! Get over it!) Is it the overturned bucket of beady-eyed dead shrimp littered across the table in the ad? Is it the kitschy little crown placed ever-so-cutely on the K in "KING"? Is it the ad's preposterous exhortation that four of anything somehow constitutes an "abundance"? Am I missing something? Is it me?

To quote everyone's newest life coach, Glee's Sue Sylvester, "Of course it's not me."

Ladies and gentlemen, the Fish-Prawn King Lime-Mayonnaise Pineapple Pizza. This is just one of a host of oddities and idiosyncracies I've noticed while living here. Every place has 'em. The next entry will detail some of Malaysia's.

Of Sommeliers, Singapore, and Slip-ons

2010-02-27T09:18:00.026-07:00

So there I was, just browsing the Internet one day last October when I randomly stumbled on a job listing for a regional director position with a multinational wine investment company that was looking to expand its operations into Malaysia. Though I wasn't at all looking for a job, after reading the job description and qualification requirements, it sounded tailor-made for me, so I sent in my résumé. To make a long story short, something I almost never do here, after a lengthy process involving multiple interviews and written assessments, I was offered, on November 30, an even higher position within the company. The offer, coupled with the fact that the job wouldn't begin until January, is what prompted me to book my flight home for Christmas, which I had not initially planned to do because of the cost.

In any event, after a few discussions, the company decided to make my job title "executive director" and I indeed took up the post in mid-January, going to Singapore for two weeks for orientation and, as I found, really to just be thrown into the deep end. Fortunately, that's just the way I like it. Though I'm not at all a sommelier in the traditional sense, this job will let me put my wine knowledge and my passion for fine wine to good use. (I can add now, upon finally posting this write-up, I've been on the job for nearly four months and have been made head of Malaysia operations in addition to my executive director duties... quite a change from teaching English in a little learning center this time last year!)

So my journey south back in late January wasn't my first time to Singapore, but it was my first time to visit there as something besides a very short-term tourist (I think the longest I had stayed previously had been three days), so I thought I'd have the chance to explore and get to know the city more. As it turned out, I was so preoccupied with work (and after-work socializing with my new colleagues), that there wasn't much time to play tourist. However, one of my good friends from KL took the train down during my first weekend, and we met one of my other friends who had just recently moved from KL to Singapore so we had a really good time that weekend wandering around. The weather couldn't have been any better. It was sunny, clear, and hot. Singapore is a beautiful city and at only 1° north of the equator, it's understandably a near-explosion of green: lush, tropical foliage abounds everywhere and the city-state has done a remarkable job of preserving the trees and plants amidst all the shiny glass skyscrapers and the concrete jungle. This building here is the School of the Arts and it's truly a fantastic edifice from an architectural standpoint. The city has no shortage of impressive buildings.

Singapore gets a somewhat deserved bad rap for being a "nanny state" and implementing an almost social-engineering degree of control over its population, but in exchange for the citizens' abdication of some of their personal rights, Singapore enjoys a standard of living unprecedented in any country in the tropics. And it's awash in money, too -- indeed, Singapore's "purchasing power" wealth per capita is, depending on the source, in the top three or four in the world... several notches ahead of America's. It far and away sets the quality of life standard in the region and as close as it is to KL geographically, it could scarcely be more different. Everything is organized and efficient to the point of disbelief. Their MRT trains run on time, with great frequency, the train lines cover almost every point of the small island, and the stations are famous for their scrupulous cleanliness. Crime, particularly violent crime, is all but non-existent. The network of underground passages is mind-boggling: A shopper can, by way of vast underground store-lined walkways and MRT stations and lines, visit a weekend's worth of malls without ever being exposed to the sun.

Of course, like most things in life, this degree of wealth and efficiency comes with a trade-off. Singapore is one of the most expensive places in Asia to live, there's a certain sterility present everywhere, and the degree of government control is well-known, though it appears to be easing, if only slightly. In an effort to capture more tourist dollars, the city-state has permitted two casinos to be built. One, pictured here behind Singapore's iconic symbol, the "Merlion," is the Marina Bay Sands, owned by the Las Vegas-based Sands corporation. It's three 55-story towers, topped by a cantilevered "Sky Park" with gardens, a pool, and restaurants. Seeing it in person was amazing. The side of the towers that you can't see in the photos is even more impressive as they each bulge gracefully outward and to different extents (based on feng shui guidance) at their bases. It's a very impressive and ambitious project, all set to open (at least partially) at the end of April. The other casino is on the island of Sentosa, immediately south of Singapore's main island. It's owned by Malaysia's Genting Group and opened last month. Having casinos in Singapore at all is a huge deal, but to stem the tide of any social ills that may befall its population, the government is levying a steep entry fee for locals -- S$100 per visit. The idea is that it's supposed to discourage locals from the evils of gambling, yet still invite tourists to come and lose their money. So any local gambler will be "down" a hundred bucks by the time he first sits down at a table to play. Interesting concept, just one quite foreign to my American brain where charging one group of people for entry to a legal, legitimate business while admitting another group free of charge would never even be considered, let alone allowed.

We also found a wonderful dim sum restaurant... short on ambiance, but long on deliciousness. It's called Victor's Kitchen, it's at Sunshine Plaza, and two people can eat a pretty substantial amount of dim sum there for about S$20-25. I ate there twice and loved it both times. Their siew mai and fried prawn salad dumplings were fantastic and I definitely plan to return there on my next visit.

I stayed in a furnished condo near the Little India neighborhood of Singapore, right next to the Farrer Park MRT station and a new eco-mall called City Square. Getting to and from the office was easy and cheap on the trains. The condo, called City Square Residences, was brand new. It was small, clean, efficient... a microcosm of Singapore itself, really. The condo itself, a studio unit with a "bedroom" partitioned off by opaque sliding glass panels, was only about 600 square feet, yet had four air-conditioning units installed, so there was no chance of me ever getting hot, that's for sure. Everything was new, not just the condo -- I spent most of the first evening there unboxing things, unpackaging sheets and pillows, peeling shipping tape off of everything from the refrigerator to the flat-screen TV. Then I had to run over to the adjacent mall and buy some towels because I didn't have any. It was an interesting experience staying in an actual residence rather than a hotel or long-stay hotel/apartment.

Singapore is a relatively short distance from KL, particularly by Asian standards, where anything within a 4-to-5 hour flight is considered "nearby." It's about a one-hour flight, but with all of the headaches involved with traveling by air, and in light of KL's airport being an hour away from the city to begin with, I elected to take the bus, an executive double-decker coach with very nice seats, full meal service, personal TVs, and no airport security hassles or restrictions. The bus also picks up very near my condo in KL and I can park for any length of time for only RM1, so it really is a no-brainer. It's an easy, comfortable 4.5-hour trip down the peninsula and across the causeway into Singapore. One of the coach lines even has free Wi-Fi on its buses! Here's a nice shot of the sunset over the strait separating Singapore from Malaysia on the return journey.

And what's the slip-ons part about? Well, here in Asia, removing one's shoes at the door is almost universally common, so for me, taking my dress shoes off was always a pain, since I had to unlace them, loosen them, and pry them off. So last month, I bought my first-ever pair of dress shoes that can just be slipped on and off, a nice brown leather pair of traditional Oxford-style shoes, just sans laces! Such shoes are obviously incredibly common here -- I was recently waiting in line at the post office and there were 14 people waiting with me, 13 of whom had on slip-on shoes of some sort or another. Laced shoes are simply not common in a place where you have to take your shoes off and put them back on several times a day!

So I'm going to finally get this entry posted -- I wrote it weeks ago but have just neglected to arrange the photos and post the thing. I'll write another one soon about the past six weeks or so of my crazy life in Malaysia.

Cameron Highlands Resort

2010-02-23T22:47:00.024-07:00

When the British were running roughshod over the Malay peninsula back in first half of the 20th century, they found a few high-elevation bastions of relief from the heat and humidity of the lowlands. The highest of these was called Cameron Highlands. To the delight of the colonial overlords, they discovered that not only could they cool off, but also that tea grew exceptionally well at 1,500 meters above sea level. This was no doubt a welcome discovery because really, there’s no better way to end a hard day of colonizing and plundering than to have a civilized spot of tea.

Today, Cameron Highlands remains a welcome relief from KL’s heat and urban chaos. Reaching the hill stations of the Highlands takes about three hours, but over half of that is on a tortuously winding road that creeps along for 60 km. Sixty!! I don’t think I ever made it past third gear. Look at the route on the GPS. That’s not a misrepresentation. I’m from Colorado, so I’ve seen some twisty mountain roads, but this one was just crazy. The good thing, I suppose, is that the elevation gain is done over such a long distance, you’re really not aware of it until you realize that, hey, that air conditioner really isn’t necessary any longer.

Early along the winding road, not too far past the town of Tapah, there was a breathtaking multi-tiered waterfall called Lata Iskandar. The pictures really don’t do it justice… plenty of people were wandering around, some were swimming in the clear waters pooled at the base of the each of the fall’s cascades, and naturally, plenty of little shops have sprung up alongside the road, making it sort of an ad-hoc tourist attraction of sorts. We lingered for a short while, then continued on our way.

Cameron Highlands comprises three small villages, Ringlet, Tanah Rata, and Brinchang. We stayed at the elegant Cameron Highlands Resort, which is situated across from the golf course past Tanah Rata, but not yet to Brinchang. The entrance was suitably impressive… dark woods, period furnishings, and colonial touches everywhere. The library near the reception desk was particularly beautiful. The room itself was really quite nice, with a separate sitting area, a writing desk, a large flat-screen TV (not a flat-panel LCD, just a flat screen standard TV), dark hardwood floors, and a very fancy, well-appointed bathroom that was quite the opposite of the gargantuan one at Pangkor Laut based just on the size. This one could have used a few more square feet, but the shower was at least suitably large.

I’m not sure what the legal definition of a “resort” is, but this place felt an awful lot like just a nice hotel to me. I think there was a spa somewhere, but I’m not 100% sure. There was one restaurant (another Japanese-themed one was closed the whole time), a bar, a gift shop, and that was pretty much all. It was all fairly upscale, but the exterior entryways to the rooms lent a sort of “motel” feel to things, and I can only echo the number one complaint I saw on all the reviews of the place: Since the hotel is situated right on the main road and every room faces this road, the traffic noise is incredible. It would carry on late into the night, usually until well past midnight, and was easily the biggest blight on the hotel as a whole. For a supposed 5-star property, subjecting guests who paid a lot of money to stay there to that level of ceaseless noise is just unacceptable. Nobody asked me for my advice, but if they had, I’d have suggested investing in white noise-generating machines for each room (there aren’t that many rooms there), or even sampling the typical frequencies of the traffic noise, then having a machine in each room that could generate the inverse sound waves of those frequencies, just like active noise-cancelling headphones. It would be much cheaper than retrofitting all the windows with double-pane or sound-resistant glass, and much more practical than relocating the entire hotel. The constant drone of cars, trucks, and motorbikes at all hours of the day and night was really the only major complaint I could come up with. The restaurant was on the pricey side, but unlike Pangkor Laut, at least guests here have the option of going into town, where there are many other dining choices. That said, the chef at the hotel restaurant did prepare a truly fantastic four-course meal for us on our last night, and it was all complimentary because he knew my friend Ryan. The first course, and possibly my favoite, was a nontraditional Caesar-style salad (pictured here), adding crispy flash-fried spinach leaves to the normal romaine lettuce with massive grilled tiger prawns and fresh dill, a rich lobster bisque for the soup course, a delicious "surf-n-turf" sort of main course with Australian beef tenderloin medallions and pan-seared Chilean sea bass, and dessert of jumbo long-stemmed strawberries with three different dips. It was a fantastic meal made even better by the fact it was all served gratis. What a treat!

Naturally, we toured a huge tea plantation and a strawberry farm after that. I had never seen actual tea plants (tea bushes?) but the way they hug the contours of the land, oftentimes all the way to the top of the hills, just makes for some amazingly scenic vistas. I bought fresh strawberries and we drank so much tea over the weekend there, I may have gone slightly British by the end. One new thing I learned was that green tea and black tea are the same thing, just processed differently. Green tea is dried with minimal processing, pretty much just as it is when it is plucked from the bush, but black tea is made by bruising the leaves and allowing them to fully oxidize, thus turning black, before drying them. Going through the tea factory was an interesting experience, and it smelled wonderful.

One really vexing thing was the exorbitant price of scones everywhere we went. Clearly driven by the tourist demand for “English tea and scones,” shops have taken to charging a mint for the scones, completely overlooking the fact that they’re just simple biscuits. We went to one place where tea and scones for two was an eye-popping RM25 per person! Another annoyance was places advertising “high tea” and serving nothing but tea and biscuits. That’s not high tea by either traditional British convention, which would include meats, savory snacks, pastries, and fruits, or the more commercialized American usage, which indicates a formal setting with a wide-ranging offering of sandwiches, cakes, etc. Nevertheless, we did find a place with a reasonably priced afternoon phony high tea. It was at a new place called Hotel de la Ferns, and afterwards, we asked if we could see the rooms, and wound up being taken on a tour of every class of room on the property, even seeing both of the top-floor penthouse suites, shown here. Wow. The rooms were amazing, really smartly furnished, clean, and comfortable. During the low season, discounts of up to 40% off the rack rate are available for the asking. I will definitely stay there on my next visit (since I won’t be getting the amazing employee-only rate at Cameron Highlands Resort).

All in all, it was just a truly enjoyable and relaxing time in the hills of Cameron Highlands. I even found what proved to be a really nice Late Harvest 2004 Chilean Gewürztraminer wine at one of the shops there for the relatively low price of RM52 (not a bad price in Malaysia for a decent bottle of regular wine, let alone a late harvest wine), so I bought three bottles.

So that concludes my recap and review of the two fantastic vacations that sandwiched my trip home for Christmas. I’ve led a rather spoiled life these past two months with all the travel and commencement of a terrific new job, which I’ll talk about in the next entry, along with a two-week trip to Singapore and the celebration of Chinese New Year on the island of Langkawi. So there's still a lot to catch up on. Until then… :)

Pangkor Laut Resort

2010-02-07T07:45:00.012-07:00

It’s all about who you know. It’s true in America and it’s even more true in Asia. I’ve been pretty fortunate in my time here to have met some great people. One of my friends works for a company that, among other things, owns a few resort properties in the region. This worked out well for me because we were able to go to two very swanky resorts for a fraction of their regular rates. I thought it would be interesting to write the next two blog entries as sort of my reviews of the resorts along with my recollections. I want to write them, however, from the perspective of a full-paying guest. It’s easy to be forgiving when you’re getting 90-95% off rack rates. But if you’re paying the going rates, you tend to notice things a bit more.

First up... Pangkor Laut Resort

Probably the crown jewel of the YTL properties, Pangkor Laut is a 300-acre private island off the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, about midway between KL and Penang. It’s just south of the larger, publicly accessible Pangkor Island, itself a popular vacation spot for Malaysians. So we drove to the port town of Lumut, dropped our luggage at the Pangkor Laut Resort office and boarded our speedboat to the island. In retrospect, this was a major point of irritation – for guests paying exorbitant rates (indeed, the villa we stayed in has a regular rate of US$575), the resort still levies a RM70 per person (each way) charge for the boat ride to the island. You’d think it would be part of the package deal. But no. So we arrived at the island, and in all truth, it was very impressive. The water was clear and blue-green, the welcome was polished (a drink and a cool towel), and our luggage was whisked away to the villa while we checked in. The weather couldn’t have been much better. Pangkor Laut really is a beautiful island and the resort is integrated into the beach and rainforest setting very well.

The sea villa was pretty amazing, but I thought a bit too much of the space was given to the bathroom (it was enormous) at the expense of the bedroom/living space. It was really nice, though. There was a nice deck with sun loungers, a CD player, an iPod stereo dock, a writing desk, plenty of closet space, a mini-fridge, a huge spa tub that opened up on three sides to the sea, and a lot of privacy, which I guess is a big part of what people who come here are paying for.

We saw a fair few animals, but the most prolific were meter-long monitor lizards, huge fruit bats by the hundreds, and hornbills. I had never seen a hornbill in the wild before, so that was a bit of a treat for me. The bats would congregate en masse in a few coconut palms near the main swimming pool each day, sleeping fitfully as they hung upside down. With the last vestiges of daylight, the trees emptied and the bats set out on their nightly hunt. It was interesting, but I’m glad the bats weren’t near our villa… they were awfully noisy (and messy) during their daytime resting hours.

One of the repeated complaints I saw in travelers’ reviews of the resort was the extremely high cost of meals. Since you are effectively a captive diner, the island’s restaurants have no motivation to offer any low-priced alternatives. Most meals cost two to three times what they would cost in an expensive Western restaurant in KL. For example, a burger at TGI Friday’s or Chili’s in KL will run about RM25. At a beachside restaurant on Pangkor Laut, a burger is RM50 plus service charge and tax. A nice dinner for two people (one appetizer, two entrées, one midpriced bottle of wine, and a dessert) could easily run into the RM600-900 range. Happily, my connections to the staff got me passage on the staff boat to Pangkor Island (about a ten-minute crossing, if that), where we enjoyed a huge meal for four people, complete with beers and more dishes than we could finish, for under RM90.

The next day, a group of us went back to Pangkor to hit the markets for fresh food. One of the ladies, Annie, had decided to cook an authentic Filipino meal for us that night, so we got a whole chicken cut up, prawns from one of the many little seafood markets, and some great pork. Annie made a wonderful yellow Filipino curry with the chicken, which was my favorite. We also had a big pot of steamed rice, a bowlful of prawns cooked in a mild, tasty broth, and pork cooked rendang-style, a process that first cooks the meat in a liquid, then fries it in the rendered fats and solids once the liquid cooks off. It was all so delicious, and Annie even gave me a container of the wonderful yellow curry powder from the Philippines—and asked me to bring her back a jar of Peter Pan creamy peanut butter from America (which I did).

The resort had a couple of really nice spots... there was a library of sorts with lots of ceiling fans and open-air high ceilings. There were these bed-like places, kind of high off the ground, so you could slip off your shoes, climb the few stairs to the mattress and curl up with a book in the cool air. It was really nice. There was also a great pool right near our sea villas. This shot was taken from the lounge chairs near the pool, so you can see the "infinity edge" that separates the deep blue of the pool from the less-intense blue of the sea. We spent a fair amount of time here, sipping on drinks and feeling completely spoiled, which I guess is the whole point of a place such as Pangkor Laut.

Being a guest of the staff had other perks, too, like getting to know a lot of the behind-the-scenes things about making a unique resort like this work. One night, I sat with two of the managers—one from Australia and one from the US—and had coffee and listened to their tales of island living. The island generates its own power, but has fresh water piped over from the mainland (or at least the main island). They have a large tank on the far side of Pangkor Laut that holds enough water for three days for the resort at near-full occupancy in the event of a break in the main water pipe. Another kind of cool factoid is that they round up any snakes they come across and relocate them to an even smaller island in the straits between Pangkor and Pangkor Laut (seen here on the left side of the photo). In the interim, the snakes are housed in little plastic containers. This one holds a viper of some sort and a nonpoisonous tree snake. Like most people, I’m not a huge fan of snakes, but I thought this was a very admirable alternative to just killing them.

Honestly, the whole trip to Pangkor Laut, though short (3 full days and 2 nights), was really very memorable. I got a little sunburned, but not too bad, and it was all just such a terrific experience for me. I can’t say it would necessarily have been worth the full price, had we paid that, and the additional RM280 boat charge really rubbed me the wrong way, but there is a package for Malaysian residents that offers a two-night package, complete with boat transfers and meals (very important), for around RM800 per person total, and that’s a great deal. It’s not for a sea villa like we had, but it still gets you a very nice (and larger) hill villa or garden villa. I couldn’t honestly recommend Pangkor Laut at the full rack rate, but at the package deal price, it would be well worth it.

So I’m sure I left out some things, but I have to cap these entries at some length. This last shot is of my friends Annie and Ryan, just as Ryan and I were about to get on the boat back to the mainland. It was a great holiday and the beginning of a shamelessly enjoyable five-week period in my life. I took off most of the month of December and the first week of January, started off with a vacation to a private tropical island, followed by a trip back to Colorado for Christmas and New Year’s. Upon returning to Malaysia, once I recovered a bit from the journey, it was off to Cameron Highlands for a few days of tea, strawberries, and markedly cooler temperatures! To be continued...

Home for the Holidays... Courtesy of China Southern Airlines

2010-01-16T00:05:00.027-07:00

Note: The Christmas tree pictured here is from my house three years ago. I was hosting Christmas Day dinner that year, and, as I truly hate wrapping gifts, had naturally put it off until the last possible minute. I had set up the tree, but hadn’t put any decorations or lights on it as of Christmas Eve. Nothing like procrastination to spice up the holiday season! So one of my friends came over with his gifts and we proceeded to do our gift-wrapping together. We also drank. You know, wrap a gift, take a shot, something like that. So by the time we finished wrapping, we were pretty liquored up and it was nearing midnight. I couldn’t be bothered with actually decorating the tree at that point, so I just stuck unopened boxes of ornaments and lights, rolls of wrapping paper, and other holiday paraphernalia into the boughs of the tree (click to enlarge). Everyone loved it the next day and it became an instant classic. We still talk about it and likely will for years to come.

Happy 2010! I’m writing this while on a 777 flying back to KL now, currently early into the longest leg of the trip. This is actually officially the longest nonstop flight I’ve taken: 15 hours aloft. I looked it up, thinking this was surely one of the longest commercial flights, only to find out it’s not even in the top thirty. Whatever, though… 15 hours is plenty long enough for me. To compound the misery, I flew out from what has to be the worst major airport in America, LAX. They’re doing a years-long (and decades-overdue) renovation on the terminal, but I’ve flown in and out of LAX many times, and it’s not just an embarrassment to Los Angeles, it’s a stain on American aviation. Security was a complete nightmare, naturally, and a four-hour layover was only barely sufficient to go through the ordeal. But it gets worse… I’m flying the largest airline you’ve never heard of (China Southern) to the largest city you’ve also never heard of (Guangzhou, China). Neither of these bodes well for me. Our dinner was a complete travesty. I’m not even that picky when it comes to airline food, and this was easily one of the crappiest meals I’ve ever had in the sky. I, like both of my seatmates, couldn’t even bother finishing it. But hey, on the good side, only 13.5 hours left to go (sigh). But I can’t even get excited about that because I have a 12.5-hour layover in Guangzhou, and if it’s anything like the 8-hour festival of despair on the outbound flight, I may have to self-medicate during my time in the airport. I can’t update my blog while there because, like YouTube, the blogger.com website is banned in China. After that, it’s a relatively short four-hour flight back to KL, where I’ll arrive late in the evening, almost certainly not returning to my condo until 1 a.m. I can’t say that I’ll never fly China Southern again, but for myriad reasons, they will never sit atop my list of preferred airlines, and I’ll almost certainly not fly them across the Pacific again.

One incredibly retarded thing that they do is fail to issue boarding passes for both legs of the journey, even though they’re on the same airline. For example, when I checked in for the flight in LA, I was given a boarding pass for the LA-Guangzhou leg, but not for the Guangzhou to KL part. “You can get that in Guangzhou,” they said. It was the same on the outbound flight. Moreover, you actually have to clear immigration as a transit-only passenger on flights through mainland China. Nobody else does this – I’ve transited through five or six other countries; you don’t deal with immigration at all since you never leave the transit area of the airport. So when I arrived at the podium with my passport, it went something like this:

“Where is your visa to enter China?”

“I don’t have a visa. I’m not entering China. I’m just a transit passenger.”

“Where is your ticket?”

“I don’t have one. It’s an e-ticket.”

“Boarding pass, please.”

“Don’t have that, either. The airline said to get it here.”

“Wait.” Another officer is then summoned and an exchange in Cantonese ensues.

“Where is your boarding pass?” the second officer asks me.

“I still don’t have one.”

So they then took my passport (along with those of the other transit passengers) and disappeared for about half an hour, then a China Southern representative appeared and auctioned off the passports to their respective owners, along with boarding passes. (I already had a confirmed seat on the second leg of the trip, which makes China Southern’s inability to issue a boarding pass in Los Angeles all the more vexing.) Then the representative escorted me through a back-alley way to the boarding gate wing, which has virtually nothing on it save two sad, sad little noodle cafés and a couple of trinket shops. And there I was dumped to wait for twelve hours.

So, after sitting in Guangzhou’s crappy airport for the longest layover I’ve ever had, I’m on the plane now waiting to fly down to KL. I’m surprisingly not very fussed about the odyssey that getting from Denver to even this point has been (to say nothing of the potential hassle once I arrive in KL), but that’s largely because I just mentally shut down at the beginning. It’s really the only way you can maintain your sanity on such a long journey with all the myriad security theatrics, long queues for everything, talkative seatmates, uncomfortable seats, etc. For me, the past 30-something hours are all just a blur. We’re supposedly going to be taking off here in about 15 minutes, and it’s a bit over three hours to KL, so I’ll sign off here and pick this up with a recap of my time in Colorado once I recover from the voyage. But here’s a picture of what I’ve basically been looking at for hours on end. It’s a nice enough airport as far as design and construction, but there are no amenities at all. Just anguish.

* * * * *

Later… So this trip home was much more enjoyable overall than the last one, which included a lot of stress and business dealings. The only real drawback for the whole visit was the cold! Over a year in the tropics has made me even more cold-natured than I already was. When I arrived at the airport, it was -12°C (10°F) and snowing and the temperature never exceeded 3-4°C (37-39°F) for the duration of my visit. This picture here is from my house looking up the snow-covered street in my neighborhood. Though driving on the snow is not fun, it really was kind of nice to have snow for Christmas. One of my friends back in KL remarked that he envisioned me sitting around the Christmas tree with friends and family, with a fire in the fireplace and snow outside… then he said, “Or maybe I’ve just watched too many TV shows.” But actually, that’s pretty much how it was this year! We had Christmas at my mom’s place, and had a really nice fire going while we opened gifts around the tree. We were also treated by my mom to a sumptuous Christmas Day Champagne brunch at the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver. We’ve been there many times before for their excellent Sunday brunch, but this was a first for Christmas, and it didn’t disappoint. Interestingly, the only person I’m actually related to in this picture is my mother, standing next to me. The rest are our good friends of many years and I’ve come to realize that enduring friendships such as these are the very best kind... they are family that you actually get to choose.

The rest of the trip was mostly just eating, shopping, and visiting with my friends. I also got to go to my mother’s new workplace and meet her colleagues. It’s called the Consortium for Older Adult Wellness, a non-profit advocacy organization that helps older people take control of their health care management and their lives in general. They do really good work, and my mom had just been raving about the quality of the people with whom she worked, so it was fun to meet them. At my mother's request, I cooked an appropriately Asian meal for them (Indonesian, however, not Malaysian), and we had a nice post-Christmas lunch at their office.

For really the first time since moving to KL sixteen months ago, I actually miss some things about my home country. My like and dislike of living in Malaysia is subject to predictable ebbs and flows… when I’m sitting in a hellish traffic jam, for instance, living in KL loses almost all of its luster. Driving around Denver in the late evening (on snow, mind you), I was struck at how relatively empty the streets were. Even on fairly major thoroughfares, late at night, there were very few cars keeping me company. In KL, you are almost never alone when you drive. Anywhere, anytime, your car will be only one of many on the road. One thing I don’t miss about Colorado is the long, cold winters. Now, in fairness, winters in Denver are not what any northern-latitudes dweller would characterize as “bad” — indeed, there are plenty of sunny, mild days, and Denver doesn’t actually get a lot of snow. But this December was cold… and although snow that falls in March melts very quickly, snow that falls in mid-December tends to stick around for awhile, particularly when it’s accompanied by a lengthy cold spell. It was nice to get back to the tropical warmth of KL. As I put the finishing touches on this entry, it’s midafternoon and absolutely pouring rain outside. My friends here in KL can’t quite grasp why I like the rain so much; I’ve always been fond of inclement weather in general, but having lived in a very dry climate for so long (Denver gets very little rain during the warm months), I am as enthralled by tropical downpours as Malaysians would be by a snowstorm!

I didn’t take many photos on my trip, sorry for that, but here’s one of just some of the stuff I brought back with me… I filled my two checked bags to the absolute weight limit (23 kg/50 lbs. each), had a carry-on bag that was way, way overweight (about 18 kg./40 lbs.) – glad no one asked me to put it on a scale. And even a backpack that was about 9 kg./20 lbs. So this picture doesn’t include all the contents of my luggage, but it’s a lot of it. Of course, lots of food and food-related things… six or seven new dress shirts, things for my friends here, new shoes, all kinds of stuff.

That's all for now! Coming soon… my recaps and reviews of my trips to Pangkor Laut Resort and Cameron Highlands Resort! Stay tuned…

All Hail the Mighty Ramly Burger

2009-12-04T23:53:00.015-07:00

It seems that there's typically either so little of note going on in my life that there's no reason to update the blog, or there's so much going on that there's no time to do so. The middle ground continues to elude me. :)

The past six or seven weeks have comprised both of these extremes. My life has seemed like a baseball game... long stretches of routine and boredom punctuated by moments of high drama, tension, and excitement. While this formula works really well for baseball (and it's not too bad for life in general, either, I suppose), it really doesn't lend itself very favorably to consistent blog writing! But now I can take a breath and get everyone caught up on the last month or so...

First of all, let's talk about food. Somehow, this very popular street food here managed to fly under my radar for the better part of fifteen months, and I just don't know how that happened. It's so popular, in fact, that the primary ingredient is routinely smuggled into Singapore from Malaysia to surreptitiously serve the hungry people there. It's called the Ramly burger, and my research suggests that it's been around since about 1979, created here in KL by a man named Ramly Moknin. Someone gave me a year-old copy of Expatriate Lifestyle magazine and there was an article in there about these burgers, and all I could think is, "How disgusting... I've GOT to get one of these!" They're widely available here, and very popular, but somehow I missed them. All Malaysian beef products are banned in Singapore, so vendors smuggle the frozen beef patties across the causeway and sell them secretly there, risking their food-stall license to do so.

And what makes a mere burger worth risking one's livelihood? Well, I can tell you that, by pretty much any measure, this thing is a culinary abomination. It makes McDonald's look like health food. So, as you can imagine, it tastes fantastic. Anything this bad for you surely would.

The burger starts out with essentially the cheapest, crappiest, sad little frozen beef patties that (not a lot of) money can buy. You can get a 10-pack from the freezer at Tesco for about RM5 or so, less than US$2, and the question of whether or not any cows were actually involved in the creation of this product might even be debatable. (Note the unintentionally humorous "90% pure meat"—not beef, but meat—sign.) Anyway, Ramly burger carts are, for reasons unknown, almost always found next to 7-11 convenience stores. Everyone apparently knows this except me, so when I asked a friend of mine about this mysterious burger, he said, "Oh sure, there's a stall near my place that has the best Ramly burgers in town." (Indeed, the cart had a little certificate pinned to it from a local newspaper declaring the fat-and-calorie bomb burgers there to be the best in Klang Valley for 2009.) So I was eager to try this thing and then hate myself in the morning for it. First, the vendor cooks a patty on a hot griddle. Mine was cooked in a puddle of dirty grease. Yum. The bun was then split and buttered (likely with some palm oil derivative) and placed face-down on the griddle. Next, he cracked an egg, muddled the yolk around and spread it out very thinly on the hot surface (about 10 inches/25 cm across...wow), then placed the burger patty of doom into the center of the fried egg, then folded up the sides of the egg around the meat, like a little parcel. Some cooks will butterfly the beef patty, slicing it horizontally. This guy didn't, though. He simply seasoned the patty with something called Maggi seasoning, added liberal squirts of mayonnaise and sweet chili sauce, and a dash of thick Worcestershire sauce. His wife was on veggie patrol next to him, so she added a few bits of slivered onions to the burger. The toasted bun was set open to receive the egg-wrapped burger, onto which she added a handful of shredded cabbage or some sort of local lettuce (not like iceberg or romaine lettuce -- it looked very cabbage-y). Then the cook added more mayo, more chili sauce, a bit of mustard, and something that looked like BBQ sauce, mashed the top bun onto it and wrapped it up. There may have been a slice of cheese added at some point, but who would have ever seen it under all that muck and despair? So to recap, we have some beef-like product, fried in a lake of fat, a fried egg, the equivalent of a heaping tablespoon of mayonnaise, the same amount of sweet chili sauce, and a few scraps of cabbage and onion to make it a balanced, nutritious meal. I felt my arteries hardening and my cholesterol rising just watching it be made.

My friend had his burger made, too (it's a fast process) and we walked over to the open-air area of food stalls and tables and prepared to eat this thing. A girl came over for drink orders and I ordered an apple juice, kind of in the same logic as people who order a triple-scoop ice cream sundae with extra chocolate sauce and nuts, and a diet Coke. I will say this: ordering fruit juices at a food stall in KL is a different experience than getting fruit juice at a restaurant in America. It took over ten minutes to get the juice back to me because it's fresh -- they actually pulverize and juice the apples. I should have taken a picture because I foolishly ordered a large ("Small or big?" she asked) and it was huge. HUGE. Probably a full liter of juice. They ask if you want sugar added, but I didn't. It was great, but wow... next time I'll get the small version. The one I had was like an apple orchard in a glass.

As for the Ramly burger...? YUM. Look at this picture. Disgusting, isn't it? What a mess. This was a four-napkin burger and I still felt like I needed a shower afterwards. But ohhhh what flavor. From a calorie and saturated fat perspective, I'm pretty sure this thing would outpace a Big Mac, but wow, it sure tasted good. I'm determined never to get addicted though. Perhaps once a month as a treat. Truly a guilty pleasure.

There's much more news to share -- I'm currently back home in Colorado for the holidays, but will return to KL in early January. I'll be sure to update again soon!

Tent Revival, Tesco Style

2009-10-10T00:37:00.003-06:00

So there I was, aimlessly pushing my shopping cart ("trolley") through my local Tesco hypermarket, doing my biweekly grocery shopping. Then, about midway down the milk and cheese aisle (a very expensive aisle indeed, given the price of dairy products here), I stopped dead in my tracks, listening to what sounded like a familiar tune on the store's PA system. Now, as a point of background information, I've found that Asia in general likes old American soft rock and pop music from the 70s and 80s. I clearly remember sitting in a restaurant in Bali once a few years ago, amazed when "I Honestly Love You" by Olivia Newton-John came on the stereo, followed by an early Backstreet Boys song. So I've come to expect this. I was in a store the other day and found myself humming along to Kenny Rogers' old early-80s hit, "Lady." But nothing could have prepared me for this.

I literally stopped my cart (oh look, New Zealand butter is on sale this week!) and listened, thinking, "No, that can't be what I'm hearing." It was the melody of "Blessed Assurance," one of the most popular of Christian hymns. My first thought was that something else had just been set to the tune. But no... they lyrics were in English and then the full choir came in, four-part harmony... "Blessed assurance / Jesus is mine / Oh what a foretaste of glory divine...This is my story / This is my song / Praising my savior / All the day long..." I couldn't believe it and resumed my cart-pushing, chuckling away at the dichotomy of this full-on Christian hymn being played over the PA system in a Malaysian supermarket as dozens of Muslim housewives, all bedecked in their colorful headscarves and accompanied by their husbands, navigated their trolleys through the aisles, blissfully unaware of the irony. Now, even though I've pretty well disavowed myself of any organized religion in my adult years, I grew up in the Methodist church and "Blessed Assurance" was always one of my favorite hymns. I never had an inkling all those years ago that, someday, I'd be living in Malaysia, and certainly never in a million years could have imagined that I'd hear that hymn while wandering through a grocery store here!

Jesus Christ, ladies and gentlemen... brought to you by Tesco.

Reflections

2009-10-02T21:16:00.009-06:00

Written September 24-25, 2009

From seat 61-A… I’m sitting on a 747 at 37,000 feet typing on my new little netbook, en route from Minneapolis to Tokyo. I packed two suitcases just as full as I could pack them (one was exactly at the 50-pound limit) and my mom dropped me off at the airport in Denver this morning and I took the short flight to Minneapolis (this is a shot of the city from the plane) where I got off one plane, walked from one concourse to the next, and immediately boarded my flight to Tokyo. It was a complete breeze, much easier and less stressful than transitioning from domestic to international in the craptacular Los Angeles airport. I didn’t have to go through a second security screening, didn’t have to walk a mile, and didn’t have to leave the building or recheck my bags. Even though it was a smooth (if not leisurely) connection, I can truly say I have not been alone on these planes: The first leg of my trip back to KL was 100% full, and I swear, even on this huge 747 that holds 403 people, I think this one is, too. As we were taxiing into position for our takeoff roll, the captain told us our takeoff weight was 833,000 pounds and we’d hit 190 mph as our rotate (takeoff) speed. I always think it’s cool when airline pilots provide information like that. I figure the vast majority of the flying public doesn’t care, but for some of us, powered flight is still an amazing feat… that a huge vehicle carrying over 400 people and weighing nearly a million pounds can roll down a runway and leave the earth.

Now, in truth, I have to admit that, despite my misgivings and fears, Northwest has redeemed itself pretty well. Not sure if it’s the merger with Delta or what, but even though I do feel like a cattle on its way to slaughter back here in coach class, the service on and timeliness of the flights has been surprisingly good. The only thing keeping the longest of the flights (11-12 hours) from being pretty much on par with the top-tier airlines like Singapore, Malaysia, and Cathay, is the lack of a personal TV monitor in the seatback. On-demand audio and video is a truly wonderful amenity on any long-haul flight. The leg from Tokyo down to Singapore (also long, but a mere 7 hours compared with 12) is on an Airbus A330 which is not only equipped with personal seatback TVs, but also power outlets so you can have limitless laptop time. If and when Delta/Northwest upgrades its 747 fleet for the epic trans-Pacific flights, life will be good!

So concludes a whirlwind ten days back in my home city. The first few days were so enjoyable, but also strange. I felt like a visitor in my own neighborhood. I checked my garage at my house, where all of my things are being stored, along with one of my vehicles. I expected everything to be under a layer of dust and for there to be an apparent sense of the passage of a year. But it was exactly as I had left it and it looked (and felt) like I had just been gone for a weekend vacation, not away for an entire year. It was if time had stood still. Very odd. However, as the days passed, that feeling was replaced by one of belonging and normalcy, and as I slid into the second week of my time in Denver, I found that I had, in many ways, almost forgotten what my life in KL was really like. I have always been a person who largely lives “in the moment” and seldom longs for times past or dreams of a future that may or may not come. And thus it was so here. When I’m in Malaysia, at least after the initial culture shock subsides, it feels just as normal and natural to me as when I’m anywhere in my home country. Yet being back in Colorado, with the warmth of summer quite literally giving way to the cold of winter during my stay, it all felt just as comfortable to me as well. Towards the end of my stay, as much a product of my familiarity with home as anything, I felt like my life and experiences in Malaysia were just a distant memory, not a reality to which I’d be returning in very short order.

Lunch is being served… let’s see what’s on the menu and I’ll resume writing after I eat…

Hmm… well it wasn’t that great, but not awful. There was a shrimp cocktail with three good-sized shrimp (with lemon and cocktail sauce, even!) and that was good, but the little dish masquerading as a salad was just tragic. A few scraps of wilted Romaine lettuce, a single piece of radish, and three sad, sad slices of tiny cucumber. Only the packet of Ranch dressing saved it from being a complete failure. You can put Ranch on anything and make it taste better. The entrée I chose was some sort of chicken thing with rice and cooked carrots. It was alright. I had some chardonnay and green tea with the meal. I feel better having eaten, but that was certainly no gourmet meal.

So during my somewhat short stay in the U.S., I ate Mexican food a couple of times, had some terrific margaritas, took a drive into the mountains to see the fall colors, ate pizza with real pepperoni (sorry, Malaysia… beef pepperoni just doesn’t cut it), went to a party, spent time with friends and family, reconnected with my Amazon parrot, Shiloh, went to two baseball games, wandered around a weekend Italian culinary and cultural festival, and witnessed a typical Colorado drastic change in weather. This past Sunday, it was 85°F/28°C in Denver with lots of sunshine. The next day, it was about 45°F/8°C (as a daytime high, mind you) with rain, snow, and general gloom and despair. This sort of mind-boggling weather change is common in Colorado. The last three days made me almost miss the perpetual warmth of KL!

Really, the only thing that kept my trip back home from being entirely enjoyable was having to deal with the former tenant who was renting my house. Although she had moved almost all of her belongings out of my house, enough was left behind to cause difficulty with cleaning and getting things ready to try to rent the house out again to a new tenant. After several days of her not returning my messages, not taking my calls, and missing meetings we had scheduled to finalize her move-out, I was under enough time constraints to have no choice but to consider the house abandoned and remove what was left in the house. Needless to say, after that, my former tenant became very interested in communicating with me, but of course, it was too late at that point. I also had to screen and hire a new property manager to handle things with the next tenant, as well as do a few other things I had on my list to do before heading back to Malaysia. My last four days in Denver were incredibly stressful and almost wholly unenjoyable, compounded by the miserable weather. When I left KL, my friends there all wished me a “good holiday” and such, but I told them that, because of the house rental situation, as well as some other financial and business matters to which I had to attend, it wasn’t really what one would think of as a quintessential holiday. There were definitely pockets of fun and enjoyment, though, but if anything, it was a working vacation.

But for now, currently flying high over the Canadian Rockies on a track that will see Alaska and the Arctic, it’s back to the relatively simple life I lead in Malaysia. Back to my students and my friends, my culinary adventures, and my traveling, photography, and writing. I will say this, though… my trip back to Denver suggests to me that I won’t have any real problem re-acclimating to my American life when I do move back. I’ve read books written by expatriates that claim the move back to the U.S. is more difficult than the initial move abroad. I can certainly see why, and I’m not saying it would be effortless for me. I know I’ll miss my life in KL… the friends I’ve made and the experiences I’ve had… I’ll be reflective and introspective for a long time after I return, I’m sure. But I think I’ll adapt and get back into my American mindset and routine with not too much difficulty. I’ll be a changed person though, presumably for the better. I wish more people could experience life outside their own comfortable routine, if only for awhile. It’s been a very rewarding experience for me so far, and I know I’ll look back on my life overseas without a scrap of regret.

Well, it’s now 5:30 pm in Denver, 6:30 pm in Minneapolis, 8:30 am tomorrow in Tokyo, and 7:30 am in KL. I’ve logged about four cumulative hours of flight so far, and I’ll arrive at KLIA in just about 24 hours (that includes a short connection in Tokyo and a lengthy layover in Singapore). When I’m in Singapore’s excellent airport, I plan to avail myself of the transit hotel and club facilities so I can arrive back in KL at least somewhat rested and refreshed on Saturday morning.

I’m going to try to get some shut-eye now… I didn’t sleep well at all last night, nor very long, so my eyes are getting droopy. Thanks for reading! More from the other side of the world later.

Seven hours later…

I think we’re perhaps three hours or so from Tokyo, maybe even a bit less. I slept a bit, had a snack which was pretty good (a small cucumber-and-egg sandwich with fresh fruit and a couple of cookies), and watched two movies on the overhead screen. It feels like nighttime of course (half past midnight back in Denver), but when I lift the shade, it’s still daylight outside. I’m not sure exactly where we are now, but I believe it's somewhere north of the Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea. I can smell food, so I’m guessing the flight attendants are heating up our final meal of this long flight. I’ll have scrambled eggs with sausage and potatoes, along with orange juice and fresh fruit.

Later still…

Greetings from seat 12-A en route to Singapore. I have no seatmate this time, so I have a bit more elbow room, hooray! It’s now September 25th, 4:15 am in Denver, 7:15 pm in Tokyo. For the first time, I’ve had absolutely no downtime at all on this multi-segment flight. When I arrived in Minneapolis, I immediately went to the gate for the flight to Tokyo and the boarding was already well underway. Similarly, once we landed in Tokyo, I had to go directly to the gate with no time to sit or wander or anything. As before, the flight was already boarding when I arrived. None of the connections have been so tight that I’ve had to hurry, but it’s unusual to not have any sort of layover so far. That will change in Singapore, where I’ll basically stay overnight for a six-hour layover before catching a very early Malaysia Airlines flight to KL. The next entry will be from home!

Back in the States

2009-09-28T02:32:00.009-06:00

Written Friday, September 18th...

Well, I’ve been back in the United States for about five days and it’s been interesting to say the least. One of the primary things on my to-do list during my visit was to settle the rental of my house in Colorado. The person renting it was unsure whether or not she’d stay on, and it seems as though she’s not. Actually, since she hadn’t paid rent properly this month, I actually told her she needed to leave. So I’ve had to deal with that, along with some car maintenance, household chores for my mother, and the blizzard of untended business and financial messes that have piled up in my absence. It’s definitely not been fun, but there have been some good times outside of the more business-oriented aspect of my visit. I’ve gotten to see good friends, eat some wonderful foods I hadn’t had in a long while (and drink some fantastic margaritas). Yesterday, my mom and I took a drive into the mountains just west of town. September is my favorite month in Colorado… daytime temperatures are usually around 75°F (24°C) with cool, crisp evening temperatures around 45-50°F (7-10°C). Perfect weather, and the leaves on all the aspen trees in the mountains are beginning to change to a brilliant yellow. So we headed into the high country to see the autumn colors. The weather was terrific, and though the leaves weren’t at their peak color, they were well underway, and the scenery was beautiful.

Another thing I’ve been doing is shopping for things to take back to Malaysia with me, typically things that are either very difficult to find there or notoriously expensive. I even had to go to a thrift store to buy a second suitcase to fill. Fortunately, it was laughably cheap (about US$4), so it’s veritably disposable at that price. It’s completely filled, mostly with food or food-related things. I also bought a new little Garmin GPS for one of my friends in KL since they’re about three times more expensive there. Also, for those who have read since the beginning, you may remember that one of my suitcases was destroyed on my initial flight to KL (between Denver and Los Angeles). A notable casualty of that suitcase shredding was one of the speakers for my bookshelf stereo system, so I’ve been making do with only a single speaker ever since. I brought back the lone speaker and bought two new ones (different style) to replace it. Martini glasses, bacon bits, soft corn tortillas, and all kinds of other assorted things will make opening those suitcases back in KL a total joy for me.

One thing I’ve been made very aware of in my short time back in America is how comparatively uncomplicated my life in KL is. In his seminal work, Walden, Thoreau urged the reader to live a simpler life, and there’s definitely a great deal of merit in that philosophy. I think for a lot of Americans (and indeed people in plenty of other countries), we replace serenity and contentment with just a lot of frenetic activity. For many people, if they were asked to stop, reflect, and really ponder how content and satisfied they were with their lives, their initial thought would be, “I’m too busy to really think about that.” As Shakespeare wrote, “Life...is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Potentially depressing, but also illuminating and all too often true… but changeable.

En Route...

2009-09-12T10:52:00.007-06:00

Well, I got everything taken care of and packed my bags and one of my friends graciously drove me to the airport, which is so far away from KL, I'm surprised they can still legally call it Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

I checked in with Malaysia Airlines for a whopping 39-minute flight to Singapore. (It's such a short flight because KLIA is already so far south of KL, it's nearly halfway to Singapore already.) After landing, we were taxiing to the terminal and I got to see my first and second Airbus A380s. One was a Singapore Airlines plane, the other was flown by Qantas. Now the world's largest passenger airplane, it really just looked like a regular big plane... until I saw it in relation to a Boeing 777, itself a huge jet. The A380 is mammoth... not so much because of its length (it's barely longer than a 747), but because its double-decker fuselage makes it just look so fat and massive. I can't wait for the day I fly on it. There are only 19 of these planes in passenger-carrying service in the world right now, so to see two in a span of a couple of minutes was pretty cool. I'm kind of an aviation nut, so I'm always fascinated by airplanes... my 7.5-hour flight from Singapore to Tokyo is on an Airbus A330, a twin-aisle medium-range jet. Despite being operated by Northwest Airlines, that flight should be okay since we at least have personal TVs in the seatbacks. Not sure if it's on-demand audio and video or not, though. However, in Tokyo, I change over to a Boeing 747-400 whose cabin clearly hasn't been dragged into the 21st century as it has only overhead TV screens. That should be a fun 11-hour flight, shouldn't it?

And for the first time, I'm not arriving in the U.S. at either of my normal gateway cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Instead, we'll be flying over Alaska and Canada into Northwest's main hub at Minneapolis. It's one of the few semi-major cities in America that I've not been to, so I'll at least get to cross that off my list as payment for the misery I'm sure to endure on this flight. (I figure if I just assume it's going to be sheer hell, even if it's mediocre, it'll seem great.)

Okay, it's about 1:15 a.m. now, so I'm going to take a nap for awhile and then freshen up for my 5:40 a.m. flight to Tokyo... more later!

Satu Tahun... One Year

2009-09-07T09:07:00.012-06:00

I just got home a little while ago from one of my tutoring classes and am eating a bowl of tom yam, a spicy, citrusy Thai soup that I talked about on this blog months ago. I don't have it often, but I always enjoy it when I do! I thought I'd write a quick blog entry while I eat...

So just in case National Day, Ramadan, and the Hungry Ghost Festival weren't enough, we're also observing the Mooncake Festival here in KL. And just for fun, it's also Nuzul Quran today, yet another public holiday here, a Muslim holiday commemorating, I think, God giving Mohammed the Qu'ran. Also, on top of all of that, Saturday (September 5th) was my one-year anniversary in Malaysia. Oddly, it didn't make the calendars here, but I'm sure it was just an oversight.

One year in KL... I can hardly believe it's been that long. It's one of those things where it seems to have flown by, yet thinking of things from my early days here feels like it was so long ago.

I'm heading back to the other side of the world soon for a visit, and I'm taking some Chinese mooncakes with me to give to friends and family. I may need to try a few different kinds of these things before I do that... they're a bit unorthodox to a Westerner. Remember the dim sum from the last entry? The place we ate was one in the Tai Thong group of restaurants here; supposedly, their mooncakes are quite good, so I bought four of them. I did try one of them already, but it's one of the newer varieties, not a traditional "old-school" mooncake. It was a snow skin type (white crust made from glutinous rice paste) with tiramisu filling. I can tell you, it didn't really taste like tiramisu, but it was delicious. A thick chocolate-like paste (someone assured me it wasn't chocolate at all, but rather a sweet red bean paste) surrounded this firm green center, which may or may not have been a duck's egg yolk, dyed green (probably not... more on the egg yolk thing later). This particular type of mooncake must be refrigerated, so that one had to be eaten here. The rest that I bought are the more traditional types and don't require refrigeration. Dinner's over, so I'm about to try another one here and have taken a couple of pictures of it to share with you!

But first, what is a mooncake and why are they eaten? So glad you asked!

As many cultures have calendars based on the lunar cycle, the Chinese being among the most well-known of these, it stands to reason that the moon itself is a particularly auspicious symbol. In Chinese culture, the eighth lunar month is set aside for lunar worship and moon watching. On the fifteenth day of this month, the Mid-Autumn Festival is held. Mooncakes are such an integral part of this festival, that it's become colloquially known as the Mooncake Festival. The traditional mooncake has a thin pastry-like crust that's been imprinted with the Chinese characters for longevity and harmony, a thick, dense filling made from lotus seed paste or red bean paste, and in the center, a salted duck egg yolk, which symbolizes the moon. Yes, a "salted egg yolk" sounds odd to me, too, but they're hugely popular here. In the markets, I see boxes of eggs packed in damp, salted charcoal. The eggs can also be soaked in brine. Over about a two-week period, this salt-cures the egg, and the yolk solidifies and becomes bright, deep orange in color. From that point, the egg can be boiled or steamed and eaten or mixed with other foods. And as you now know, the yolk can also be put into a mooncake! It sounds a bit weird, I know, but I've come to realize that a culture that's been around for 5,000 years is bound to know a few things about a few things! Besides, Americans put egg yolks in their cakes, too, right? Sure, they're mixed up and cooked, but they're still there, right?

The mooncake I'm eating now does not have a yolk in the center, unfortunately... I was hoping to try one. This one has a filling of green tea and lotus seed paste, and it's wonderful, much to my dismay... rather hard to stop eating it. It's very dense, and only slightly sweet... quite nice to cut into thin slices and eat along with a cup of green tea. Tragically, I've managed to eat nearly half of it as I've been sitting here writing. Curse you, evil mooncake!! (Here's a great blurb about the Tai Thong mooncakes I bought, along with all the new flavors they've introduced this year... they really are excellent.)

Anyway, that's about all for now... just a short entry to share the joy of mooncakes with everyone. More to come soon!

Slices, The Sequel... "And Dim Sum More"

2009-08-28T02:36:00.037-06:00

Lots of things are happening around here lately...

First, it's Ramadan again. What's kind of interesting to me is that pretty much no one here calls it that, though. It's always just referred to as the "fasting month." Ramadan follows a lunar calendar so it's at a different time each year. This year, the Malaysian Independence Day (August 31) falls during Ramadan. I don't think it makes either one any more special, but it's a somewhat unusual occurrence. (Click on this picture I took from my car at the intersection of Jalan Sultan Ismail and Jalan P. Ramlee near the center of KL. There are a few things that stand out to me: The Malaysian flag all over the place, the women wearing headscarves on the left, the almost surreal amount of trees and foliage at a fairly major intersection, and—of course—the ever-present traffic.) Ramadan itself throws the whole city into a very different rhythm because Muslims can't eat or drink during the day. So the food courts and stalls are not at all crowded during lunch, but after the evening call to prayer (usually around 7:30, but it varies a bit), there's a palpable buzz in the city as nearly half the population prepares to eat, then all at once, hundreds of thousands of Malays (mostly) descend ravenously on restaurants and food stalls throughout the city. Try getting a seat at virtually any place at 8 p.m. and you'll be out of luck. A lot of the hotels and nicer places have nightly "buka puasa" (breaking the fast) buffets. I've read studies that suggest that many followers actually gain weight during Ramadan since they fast all day then basically gorge themselves in that one evening meal. In any case, even though it's only the Malays (and a minority of Indians and other non-Malays) who observe it, Ramadan affects the entire rhythm of KL for a month. For me, only experiencing it for the second time, it's pretty interesting.

In my neighborhood, there's some construction going on (as always) -- Since my car was in the shop, I took my camera and walked down to the village. It's not at all uncommon to see cars like this with a sheaf of parking tickets stuck under the wiper. It always makes me kind of chuckle for some reason. So here in Damansara Perdana, the big PJ Trade Center is nearing completion and three new condo blocks are going up. Each of them is an offshoot of an existing development, but only one is being built on the same site as its predecessor (Metropolitan Square). One, which I've mentioned here before, is Armanee Terrace II, and its site is adjacent to the existing development, which is just mammoth. The other is something called Ritze Perdana II, which is on a different site completely from the original. I looked at an apartment at the Ritze. (Note the extra "e" on the end... that tells you it's really fancy) It was barely over 400 square feet and they wanted RM1800 a month, so it was a very short visit. My days of living in micro-studio apartments are solidly behind me. In any event, here are some shots from around the neighborhood. The sky was threatening that day, so I took my umbrella with me, and sure enough, as I was walking back home, it started pouring. It was a wind-driven rain, though, so the umbrella didn't do much good. By the time I got back home, my shirt was only somewhat damp, but my jeans (from about mid-thigh down), socks, and shoes were totally soaked. Rainstorms are becoming noticeably more frequent in the last couple of weeks, so it would seem we're making the transition back to the rainy season. The picture is from my condo, but it doesn't nearly do justice to how hard it had been raining five minutes earlier.

The project I'm most excited about, though, is one that's sorely overdue. A proper intersection is going in at the junction of two perpendicular streets. Damansara Perdana is quite small, as KL suburbs go, and there's only one main road into the village and it's not a through street. It dead-ends by my condo, actually. But as you go to leave the area, there's a road to the right that leads to Ikea, The Curve, Tesco, and all sorts of other eating and shopping places. But you can't turn! They've halfheartedly barricaded the junction with poles and such (see the photo), and so everyone has to drive clear down to the main interchange and do a U-turn, then drive up the hill and turn left. Again, words—and even photos—are really insufficient to truly convey the stupidity of this system. But now, with the construction of some new office blocks, it seems they finally saw the need for building an actual, proper intersection. They've cut in what will be some turn lanes, added new curbs as necessary, widened the roadway itself in a couple of places, and presumably will put in a traffic light or four. Better late than never, I guess, and as I think about it, this will be Damansara Perdana's first traffic light. (Others nearby are actually in Mutiara Damansara.)

In food news, because you know there has to be some of that, one of my friends introduced me to this great restaurant in Petaling Jaya, not too far from where I live. Everytime he talks to me, he carries on about some restaurant he has to take me to. I tease him and tell him his whole life revolves around food... but that's as close a thing to a national passion as Malaysia has, and I'm rather fond of good food, too, so everybody's happy. Anyway, we go to this place called Imperial Garden for dim sum... not only is the food great, but as it's on the 7th floor of a building, the views are pretty decent, too. I'm a big fan of dim sum, especially the shrimp dumplings. Even as we're eating, my friend is talking about other food and other restaurants I have to try. It's almost comical how much Malaysians love to not only eat, but talk about eating!

I'm going back to America in two weeks' time for a short visit. I'm really excited about going back, and September is my favorite time of year in Colorado... that wonderful period of transition between summer and winter. The aspen leaves in the Rockies usually hit their peak of color in the third week of September, so I should be there just at the right time. I have been compiling a veritable laundry list of things to bring back with me, too... after nearly a year here in KL (September 5th is my one-year anniversary), I'm starting to miss some of the things I never gave much thought at all when I lived in Denver. Isn't that always the way? It's usually the ill-noticed, mundane things we miss the most.

I'm doing something I thought I'd never do, though, and that's taking a U.S. airline on a trans-Pacific flight. On my numerous trips to Asia and back, I've always stuck with airlines known for quality and service, namely Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Malaysia Airlines, all five-star airlines. America does a lot of things really well, but air travel is not one of them, so I was loathe to fly with an American carrier for that long a flight. However, I found a really good deal on Northwest (US$850 round-trip to Denver... usually it's at least $950-1,100 even to the West Coast), and the price difference between that flight and one on a good airline was large enough to make me bite the bullet. If it's nearly as abysmal an experience as I think it might be, I won't do it again... I'll pony up the money. I do get to fly Malaysia Airlines down to Singapore, at least, but that's only an hour's flight. From there, it's Northwest Sucky Airlines up to Tokyo (7.5 hours), then across the Arctic to Minneapolis (11 hours), then a short two-hour hop from there to Denver. This picture pretty much sums up my opinion of Northwest.

Anyway, my mechanic (whose name is Sim) has informed me that, after about three weeks, my car is finally ready. It has a replacement engine and everything works again. I also had him do some other routine maintenance and also replace the clutch since everything was already disassembled. The total cost for the engine, its transport from another state, and all the labor was a measly RM1200 (less than US$340), which is positively amazing to me. I'll be happy to have my car back! I'm so grateful to Sim for letting me use his car in the meantime, but it's a 27-year-old Nissan Sunny, so it's over twice as old as my Proton and as much as I like to demean my little car, it's actually pretty decent, and it's in good condition overall.

I picked up my car a few hours ago and so far, so good... the new engine actually runs better than the old one did. I tried to give the mechanic some extra money for letting me use his car, but he wouldn't take it... he kept saying, "No no, too much! It's too much!" I did finally convince him to take the change from paying the bill, which was only RM35 ($10). What a nice guy. Here's a picture of all three of the guys who worked on my car. Sim's the one on the right.

So a couple of nights ago, around midnight, I smelled smoke so I went out on my balcony. There, literally in the middle of the road at the dead end was a massive, smoldering bonfire. (Well, really not much fire, just a lot of smoke, so I guess more of a "bonsmoke.") I didn't know what was going on, but there were a few Chinese people milling around. A couple of ladies were sitting on the curb, somberly burning things. I didn't know what they were burning, and I couldn't really see much at all properly because of the trees, but if it was a party, it was a pretty dull one... they weren't making much noise at all. They were wrapping up, but as they left, I saw all the litter, and the fire was left to burn itself out. I was not amused so I got my camera and went downstairs with the idea of photographing this mess and showing the pictures to the property management company later, asking them why they were paying our security company RM30,000 a month if they're just going to let people do these things right in front of the condo! When I got down to the street, I just got more confused... there were full containers of food left here and there, fruit, beers, sodas, and lots of candles, incense sticks, and little Chinese flags stuck in the ground. I saw that the fire had mostly died out by then, snapped my pictures, and headed back upstairs, quite baffled and still a little annoyed. (It was a huge mess... and what a waste of perfectly good beer!)

Well, the next day, I found out that it was all part of the Hungry Ghost Festival. In Chinese tradition, the living pay respects to (and feed) their deceased ancestors during this time. The seventh lunar month is regarded as "Ghost Month," and the fifteenth day of that month is Ghost Day. So the full containers of food and beer and such were left to feed the ghosts of dead ancestors. Well, I'm just so glad I didn't go down there with a garbage bag in hand! The fire and a lot of the litter was owing to joss paper, a sort of "spirit money" that is burned to give the dead ancestors some money to spend in the afterlife. A good article on this fascinating tradition can be found here. For some reason, after learning about all this, that photo of the three cartons of food, all neatly lined up, spoons arranged in formation... opened and ready for the ghosts to enjoy... I don't know, it's all just a bit creepy, isn't it?

Okay, let me get some photos thrown into this mess of an entry and get it posted! More about the upcoming mooncake festival and my one-year anniversary in Malaysia to come soon!

Slices of Malaysia Living

2009-08-11T20:44:00.026-06:00

And greetings once again from the tropical jungle we call Damansara Perdana. This photo was taken by me on a stroll around my neighborhood the other day. I love it.

Really not much to report, so I thought I'd just throw together a little compendium of life here as I approach the one-year mark of my time in Malaysia. Although it's predictably hard to believe a year has gone by so quickly (don't they all?), it's frankly disturbing how fast 2009 is zipping by. The last six months in particular have just been a blur.

Currently my little car is in the shop again with its second fairly major problem in a year's time. I noticed some coolant leaking from it and the temperature light came on, so my initial thought was that there was a leak somewhere in the coolant system. Well, there was, in a manner of speaking... but tragically, the leak was actually a small crack in the engine block (basically the bottom half of an engine for the non-mechanically inclined among us). Under the high pressure present in an internal combustion engine (seen here in happier and fully assembled times), the coolant that normally circulates through the engine was being forced out through this small crack in the fatigued metal. Now, a cracked block is a pretty serious matter, one that usually involves replacing the block. This crack is very small, however, so there is some faint hope that the crack can be arc-welded and sealed. They tried doing a straightforward flame weld but that only melted the alloy around the crack. Arc welding uses a strong electric current to coalesce the metals at the point desired. They'll use argon as a shielding gas, since oxygen obviously encourages combustion. This is all well and good, but unfortunately, it means longer down time for my car. They actually have to disassemble my engine and send the block to the welding shop so that it can be arc-welded from the inside. The only reason it's not cheaper to just find a dead Proton Tiara somewhere and scavenge its engine block is that labor here is very inexpensive. Something along these lines would be completely cost-prohibitive in America. Amazingly, though, my saintly mechanic has given me his car to use as long as mine is languishing at his shop. I couldn't believe it, but he insisted it was fine, he could ride a motorbike. I need hardly mention that this would never, ever happen in America unless you were a dear, personal friend of the mechanic already. And even then it would be questionable.

Now, lest you think everything about Malaysians is sunshine and roses, permit me to gently disabuse you of that notion. Take littering, for example. The tendency of Malaysians to discard their rubbish with utter impunity is simply rampant. Obviously not everyone here does this, but anecdotal evidence has shown me that those who don't think twice about littering aren't exactly an endangered species here. Whether it's dropping cups and bags and wrappers and cartons wherever their usefulness to their owner has ended, or actually chucking entire bags of household garbage out of their car onto the side of the road (no exaggeration), littering is a real problem here. It's not even a matter of a lack of proper waste receptacles (although sometimes that's admittedly an issue), it's really just sheer laziness and disrespectfulness. I took this picture in the elevator lobby of my condo to really just drive the point home. I did not set this photo up in any way whatsoever. The damned garbage can is right there, yet someone couldn't be bothered to walk those four long steps to dispose of their trash properly. After snapping this picture and rolling my eyes, I threw the trash away. Unbelievable. But this is a real issue here and I don't know what people think happens to their bags of crap and styrofoam chicken rice containers and various other detritus when they just leave their rubbish on the sidewalk or in the landscaping. There are people whose job it is to sweep up and tidy the streets (at least in my neighborhood), so we're not awash in debris, but honestly, come on. Remember the big "Keep America Beautiful" campaign back in the late 70s or thereabouts? Apparently, Americans used to be litterbugs, too. Some doubtlessly still are, but if I saw a bag of trash being heaved out of a car on a highway in Colorado, I'd probably drive off the road in complete shock. I think it's safe to say that, at least in my home state, littering is very much the exception, not the rule.

The flip side of that coin is that, for all the thoughtlessness of littering that's on full display here in KL, graffiti is very uncommon. It's the exact opposite in Denver. No litter, tons of graffiti. I think I'd rather have KL's problem because you can teach people not to litter. It's a malleable social behavior. Although, to me, both littering and tagging show a callous disrespect for the greater society in which the offender lives, littering is usually borne of a degree of ignorance. The person simply doesn't know any better. They haven't been taught not to litter. Conversely, tagging is a conscious decision to vandalize something and is more of a crime that must be forcibly deterred. (Hello, Singapore caning!) Instances of tagging are seen around KL from time to time, but not on anywhere close to the same scale I've seen in American and European cities. In Denver, large fences actually have to be erected on overpasses to inhibit tagging (it doesn't always work), but here in KL, a city which has never met a patch of land on which it didn't build an elevated roadway, there are no anti-graffiti fences nor any graffiti on the overpasses.

On to funnier business... one of my friends and I were wandering around 1 Utama, one of the truly gargantuan shopping malls here, and went into a department stores. We were poking around in housewares (my favorite department... I love kitchen gadgets) and they inexplicably had a display of greeting cards amidst the spatulas and frying pans. Now, I don't even pretend to try to understand things like this any longer... I just roll with it. Anyway, this one greeting card just stood out. I don't think I need to set it up too much here... a picture truly is worth a thousand words. I whipped out my camera phone and snapped a picture of the front of the card. Of all the flowers they could have photographed to go along with the written sentiment, they chose the most phallic flower on Earth. Yup. "Thinking of you, baby... BOING!" I love finding unintentionally funny stuff like this.

Another thing happened here some weeks ago that I found particularly amusing. I was at an upscale pet store at the Ikano Power Center, yet another mall near my neighborhood and there was a bit of a ruckus around a large wire cage full of some sort of creature. Several people were clustered around it, all oohing and ahhing over whatever animals were in there. I peered in and saw the little critters and thought, "No... surely not..." So I asked one of the employees to confirm my suspicions, and sure enough: prairie dogs. I just died laughing. I told him that, where I come from, these things (although undeniably cute) are considered a pretty major pest. It gets better... not only do they sell prairie dogs as pets, they sell them for vast sums of money because it's an imported pet, so there's a certain status and prestige to it. (Pretty much anything in Malaysia that's been imported is a) considered superior to anything locally-made, and b) almost guaranteed to be expensive.) After converting the ringgits to dollars, one of these little tunnel-boring rats costs about $200. I told one of my friends back in Denver, where you can scarcely open your car door without hitting a prairie dog colony, and he said, "Two hundred bucks for ONE prairie dog? Are you joking?? I'll send you a whole box of them, we'll get rich!" I was so amused (and kind of mortified) at the whole prospect of pet prairie dogs, I actually went back a couple of days later with my camera. While I was there, I asked to hold one, but changed my mind when I saw how very unamused the little rat was at simply being extricated from his cage. These rodents are, in the wild, pretty much at the bottom of the open prairie food chain. Eagles, hawks, foxes, badgers... everybody loves to eat prairie dogs. So after being chased and stalked and devoured for thousands of years, they've understandably evolved into a rather nervous, skittish little animal. And after watching them in action in the pet store, I can assure everyone of this immutable truth: They're not remotely interested in being your housepet. They don't want to be held, they don't want to be cuddled, they don't want to be touched. When someone picks up a prairie dog, the poor animal likely just instinctively assumes the next line in that song is being eaten. I snapped a picture of the little rat desperately trying to get away from the pet store clerk and into the relative safety of the other dozen prairie dogs (most of which were huddled back the far corner of the cage). They were all squeaking and barking, clearly agitated and unhappy. I decided to pass on the great "prairie-dog-holding" experience, played with one of the parrots instead, and left, still astounded that this place was selling prairie dogs as pets!

Naturally, Malaysia does not have the market cornered on "stupid-yet-funny." Not even close. I found this gem on the Internet from a Wal-Mart store in the U.S. You know, because nothing says, "Happy Mother's Day" like a box of magnum-sized condoms. And the thing is, nowadays with the ubiquity of both the Internet and camera phones, any previously localized gaffe like this, whether in a small-town Wal-Mart, or on a local newscast, will be spread worldwide in short time, and preserved forever.

In other (non-condom-related) news, one of my biggest frustrations with living here in KL is unquestionably the driving. The crazy drivers? No. The quality of the roads? No, they're pretty good. Driving on the left? Nope, I manage that just fine. It's the actual "system" of roads in this city. It's almost impossible to convey in words or pictures how retarded the road system here is. Basically, it's a rat's nest of elevated roads, highways, toll plazas, slip roads, and ramps. And probably 80% of them are one-way. If I drive someplace, logic would suggest that I could just reverse course to come back home, but no... I have to take an entirely different route because of the prevalance of one-way roads. Many times in KL, quite literally, you "can't get there from here." There is no logical hierarchy of roads here (e.g. such as the progression: controlled-access interstate highways, divided highways, multilane roads, major arterials, minor roads, neighborhood roads, alleys, etc.). Everything is just cobbled together with little or no planning or traffic engineering and as a sad result, KL enjoys the traffic problems of a much larger city. Let me just say it clearly with no candy coating: The entire road system here is functionally, irreparably, and undeniably broken. The only real solution is to clear out the entire population, level the city, and start over again. And given that, relative to local income, cars in Malaysia are among the most expensive in the world, you'd think that this would act as a disincentive to buying and driving cars, but that is absolutely not the case at all. And people here drive everywhere! KL is the Los Angeles of Asia. I guess the logic is that if you're going to spend that much money on a car, you better well drive it every single day, whether you actually need to go anywhere or not.

I do enjoy living here overall, but in my year here, my top three gripes about living in KL are:

The aforementioned road system, or miserable lack thereof.
The painfully slow "broadband" Internet. They have no problem charging a mint for it, but it doesn't even come close to hitting the advertised speed, which in itself is nothing impressive (1 Mbps).
The outrageously high price of not only alcohol, but anything alcohol-related (corkscrews, cocktail mixers, martini glasses, and so on).

Like I said, though, living here is still pretty okay... if you're not sitting in a traffic jam, it's a laid-back, easy place for an expat to live. Take a look at this photo... and click on it and enlarge it. This is another shot of the thick, lush jungle right by my condo. I'm in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city, minutes away from top-notch shopping and dining, yet this is what I have literally steps outside my condo... look at all those shades of green!

That's about all... I'll go ahead and publish this and start on the next post with details about my upcoming trip back home to Colorado... and the outcome of my car saga. I'm fairly certain it's going to involve buying a replacement engine block or a replacement car. Either one is acceptable, I suppose... I got my car for next to nothing (especially by Malaysian car price standards) and it's been a great little car for a year. So if the block can't be repaired, I'll find the most economical way to get mobile again. Life goes ever onward...

Of Tumbles and Toilets...

2009-07-29T23:37:00.014-06:00

Now, my mother’s good humor over most of her visit is all the more impressive because of two things. First, the woman simply cannot stay upright. I don’t know if it’s an inner ear problem or what, but apparently she considers any venture wasted if she doesn’t fall down or collapse in a heap at some point. She does this at her home, she does it hiking in the Colorado mountains (recently breaking her arm), and she does it on vacation, too. She didn’t get through her first day here in Malaysia without taking a tumble. For reasons that I can only guess, most rooms and halls and such here are a little step up from their adjoining common spaces. My guess is that it’s to keep rainwater from going into people’s homes, etc. During really heavy rains here, the corridors of the condo buildings (which are covered, semi-interior halls, but still exposed to the elements at points) get very wet. Therefore, there’s a little step up to get into my condo, probably about two inches. Well, that’s all it took. We were heading out to go to KLCC or something, and she took that tiny step down into the hallway and just fell spectacularly. Now, at the moment, of course, it wasn’t funny… Mom went sprawling and all her various sundries were littered around her and until we figured out that she was completely okay, it didn’t really strike me as humorous. But only until it was determined that she wasn’t hurt. THEN it was funny as hell and I chuckled about it almost every time we left the condo from that point on.

Most unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, but one of my friends gallantly agreed to recreate the scene for me so I could photograph it for posterity. Awesome. You definitely want to click and enlarge this one for the full effect.

In the spirit of self-deprecation, any fall which doesn’t really result in injury has the potential to be funny, including my own. A couple of Christmases ago, Mom and I were driving away from my house and heading down to Colorado Springs for Christmas dinner with our good friends and I realized I had forgotten something, so I went back into the house, got what I had forgotten and sprinted back out. Well, to my misfortune, we had had a good bit of snow and some of it had iced over and I just went flying. I wasn’t amused at the moment, but within minutes, since I wasn’t terribly hurt, I was laughing at what it must have looked like, kind of replaying it in my head in slow motion. Happily, no one was present with a camera and a blog.

Within another couple of days, though, she fell again, this time somehow failing to negotiate a huge curb (seriously, like six or seven inches high). She went down in a heap, landing squarely on one knee, but this time, on a metal rain grate. That one wasn’t funny, and it’s a wonder she didn’t wind up bleeding from it. Her knee is still sore, though, nearly a month on. Naturally, being the compassionate and loving son I am, I stood there haranguing her, just happily adding insult to injury: “What’s wrong with you, woman? Can’t you even walk?? How could you not see that giant curb?? Quick! Get up! People are coming!” Apart from not breaking the skin on her knee (or breaking the knee itself), it’s also astounding that she didn’t smash her camera into a dozen pieces. It was in her hand and when she fell, she landed on two things: her knee and the camera in her outstretched hand. That was a true blessing found in a disaster, because even though the fall was bad, falling and destroying your camera on day two of a three-week trip to Asia would have been far worse.

The second thing that challenged my mom, besides walking, was the thing every Westerner visiting Asia dreads: the squat toilet. Men are lucky indeed… perhaps as few as only 15% of our visits to the bathroom necessitate sitting. Women get to do it every single time. Now, in truth, some of these squat toilets are not that bad. But more than a few are. Malaysia’s are generally better than some others I’ve had the horror of experiencing, but that’s not really saying much. Even the cleanest of squat toilets, as seen in one of these pictures, will usually elicit something along the lines of, “What am supposed to do with that?” from an uninitiated Westerner. The really bad ones just set them on an immediate U-turn, usually muttering, “I think I’ll wait,” or, “I damn well don’t have to go that bad,” or some variant thereof.

In the run-up to the Olympics in Beijing last year, one of the great tasks beset upon China was, quite honestly, outfitting the venues with a certain percentage of Western toilets so as not to traumatize the hordes of visitors. One night, I was at home (back in Denver) and was chatting online with a friend of mine and we were talking about the upcoming Olympics and somehow started talking about the squat toilet and did some web surfing to that end. We both, at our respective computers, landed on this website where, in side-splittingly funny fashion, a New Yorker by the name of Brian Sack wrote a hysterical diatribe in the form of a “how-to” guide for Westerners in China (or anywhere) who find themselves confronting these unfamiliar toilets. I offer a portion of the guide here, edited for length, but with full credit going to the author and his website, www.banterist.com. Here we go… a primer on using the squat toilet:

Rule One: Exhaust all other possibilities.

If you are truly in need and condemned to use the squat toilet, comfort yourself with the knowledge that you are several thousand miles from friends and family. No one has to know.

Proceed as follows:

Most stalls do not have toilet paper. This is the best time to realize this. Either take paper from the general dispenser in the bathroom area or preferably bring your own as it will be made of tissue and not plywood Carpaccio.

Approach the squat toilet apprehensively and make sure it's not covered in stool. If it is covered in stool, choose another stall. If another stall is not available, accept the cards that have been dealt you.

Close the door to the stall, knowing full well the handle has more germs on it than the entire population of Botswana.

Place your feet on the appropriate foot grids, assuming they are not covered in stool. If they are covered in stool, place your feet on the least fouled space you can find, being careful to maintain balance.

Unfasten and drop your trousers and underpants, making sure that they do not make contact with the urine and stool-covered surface area.

Grimace and ask yourself if a country with such a toilet can or should ever be a superpower.

Assume a squatting position like a competitive ski jumper. This is a good time to pretend you're not a miserable tourist with your pants around your ankles, squatting over a barbaric poo hole.

Use your right hand to prevent the soiling of your trousers and underpants by holding them off the ground and pushing them forward, away from any Danger Zone.

In your left hand should be the assortment of paper/wipes/anti-bacterial sheets you intend to use after you are finished with your production. Be sure not to drop any of the objects in your left hand as they will be rendered horribly irretrievable should you do so.

If you are able to maintain balance for several seconds, you are ready to begin bowel evacuation. At this point the bulk of your focus should be towards the quick evacuation of your bowels without soiling your clothing, missing your mark or—God forbid—losing your balance and falling.

After you have completed your bowel evacuation, DO NOT STAND UP. Remain squatting and miserable.
Continue using your right hand to prevent contact of your trousers/underpants with urine/stool. Place your tissues and wipes in your left hand on top of your underwear/trousers and select the items you need for wiping.

Wipe and curse culture simultaneously, all the while maintaining the squatting position.

Once sufficiently wiped, humiliated and traumatized, you may stand and re-underpant and re-trouser yourself. This is a good time to reflect on your life and also a good time to try blacking out these last ten minutes—like a freshly-sodomized felon might do.

The filth-covered flush button is behind you and may or may not work.

Open the door to the stall, again knowing the handle has more germs on it than a decade of scrapings from Paris Hilton's tongue.

Exit the stall and never, ever, ever get yourself into a situation where you have to do that again. But first, wash your hands until they bleed.

So there you have it. Another funny (and frankly educational) dissertation on the nuances of using a squat toilet can be found here. Read it before you travel abroad. The one found here, at Wikihow, is a bit more clinical and even includes a video. You may require a wee bit of therapy after visiting this site, but it’s definitely informative. Unfortunately, I didn’t impart this wisdom to my poor mother prior to her visit, but after the horror of her first squat toilet visit, she did some research online and gained a bit of insight which made the rest of her visit a bit more tolerable.

Oh, and she didn’t fall anymore, either!

One more picture just because we all need a bit more laughter in our lives…